


Sparks Flew

by freudensteins_monster



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Angst, Avenger Loki, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Darcy Feels, Developing Relationship, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Erotic Electrostimulation, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Friendship/Love, Handcuffed Together, Humor, Jane Foster & Darcy Lewis Friendship, Loki Needs a Hug, Magic, My First Work in This Fandom, Romance, Secret Relationship, Tasers, tasertricks - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 36,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5212400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudensteins_monster/pseuds/freudensteins_monster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There came a point when breaking Loki out of prison, to assist in the fight against some evil or another, was occurring so regularly that the Allfather decided to alter Loki’s sentence from “life in prison” to “community service”. It was either that or install a revolving door. Loki was forced to wear a magical bracelet (or “shackle”, as Loki would whine) which not only limited his access to his powers when he wasn’t on a battlefield, but also bind him, to a radius of ten yards, to his parole office, Thor.</p><p>Occasionally Thor (and Jane) needed a break from his brooding brother. Enter Darcy Lewis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so my first attempt at Tasertricks, I'd really love to know what you think. The fic is currently 20k words and still needs some work but I'm having trouble getting through it. Any thoughts and feedback would be appreciated. xoxox

There came a point when breaking Loki out of prison, to assist in the fight against some evil or another, was occurring so regularly that the Allfather decided to alter Loki’s sentence from “life in prison” to “community service”. It was either that or install a revolving door. Loki was forced to wear a magical bracelet (or “shackle”, as Loki would whine) which not only limited his access to his powers when he wasn’t on a battlefield, but also bind him, to a radius of ten yards, to his parole office, Thor, who wore a similar bracelet around one his vambraces.

All his life Loki had felt like his was standing in Thor’s shadow, and now it was no longer a metaphor.

But as vocal as Loki was about how degrading his new punishment was, he took undeniable pleasure in the vexation his constant proximity was causing Thor. Especially when he was trying have private moments with Jane Foster.

“Are you done mounting your Midgardian yet, Thor?” Loki shouted irritably as he paced the hallway outside Thor’s bedroom, located on one of the residential levels of Avengers Tower. “Stark has procured pizza for supper and has refused to bring me any. I am famished and the smell is driving me to distraction. I swear, if your pathetic grunting has caused me miss out on the pepperoni again I shall be, as the mortals say, very pissed off. Are you listening to me?!”

** *** **

“This is getting ridiculous, Thor,” Jane muttered, clutching a bed sheet to her chest as she stared at the ceiling.

“I know, Jane,” Thor grumbled beside her, rubbing his temple. “But there’s nothing to be done. He cannot be trusted to wander unsupervised.”

“But this is seriously affecting our relationship. Can’t you just… put him back in his cell for a long weekend?”

“That would be unfair to him.”

The ranting outside their door grew louder causing Jane to curse under her breath and reach for her clothes.

“It’s unfair to you, Thor. And to me. And as long as he’s tethered to you, he’s not going to give us a moment’s peace.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t have to be tethered to me, specifically…” Thor wondered out loud.

“What are you saying?”

Technically Loki wasn’t bound to Thor but to the gold band he wore on his wrist, he explained. And, theoretically, the band could be worn by anyone. It was just a matter of finding someone who would be willing to take on the burden from time to time. And who did they know that they could trust with such a task? Who did they know who wouldn’t mind relocating to Avengers Tower in case a prompt handover was necessary? Who did they know that wasn’t at the whim of their “super” duties? Who did they know who had a lot of free time on their hands? Who did they know who might just be as annoying to Loki as he was to them?

** *** **

“What?” Darcy asked, spitting blueberry muffin crumbs all over her shirt.

“We need to ask you something,” Jane rambled nervously, pulling Darcy’s legs off the workbench, spinning her around to face them.

“It wasn’t me,” she replied, pulling her earbuds out. “Whatever you think I did, it wasn’t me.”

“Darcy,” Jane said, cutting through her intern-turned-paid-assistant’s nervousness with her own. “Thor and I need to ask you a favour. A big one.”

“No, I will not join your braid train.”

“Darcy!”

“Sorry,” she laughed. “What? What is it?”

“You know how this bracelet binds Thor and Loki together.”

“Uhuh…” Darcy nodded, spying the latter lurking in the lab doorway. “What about it?”

“I had hoped you would take the burden from me for a short while.”

“What?!” Darcy and Loki cried in unison.

“Just for the weekend, Darcy. Please?” Jane begged.

“Thor, you cannot be serious!” Loki practically screamed. “If this punishment wasn’t humiliating enough, now you would charge this child with being my warden?!”

“Hey, I am not a child, and I am no babysitter either. I am seriously overqualified to be a babysitter – but I am seriously underqualified to be Rudolph the Psycho Reindeer’s babysitter.” Loki growled at the mention of yet another nickname he had acquired during his time on Earth. “I’m don’t have magic, or muscles, or Myeuh-muh – how am I supposed to handle HIM.”

“Do not fret, Darcy. The bracelet will give you certain powers over him.”

“Powers?” Darcy replied, intrigued despite herself. “What sort of powers? What are you talking about?”

“The bracelet will bind him to you; he will not be able to move out of its range without colliding with an invisible barrier. He cannot cause harm to the wearer for the same reason; you will be protected. And if his antics are causing too much grief to those around him, you need just wish harm to his person and a punishment will be administered.”

Thor extended his arm to Darcy, smiling warmly, only the faintest hint of desperation in his eyes. Darcy relented and clasped Thor’s arm in the Asgardian fashion, watching with amazement as the gold band unfurled itself from Thor’s wrist and wrapped around hers. Her skin hummed at the contact as the band solidified, sitting snugly around her wrist.

“Thank you, Darcy.” Thor turned to leave before remembering some of the fine print of their agreement. “Apologies, but there is one more thing. It is the nature of our work that sometimes I may need to collect Loki at short notice, as such, Stark has offered you a room here so that you will always be close.”

“Really!” Darcy squealed before Thor had finished speaking. “Why didn’t you lead with that? I’ve been bitching about my commute for months hoping Tony would take the freaking hint. Yes!”

Darcy jumped around excitedly, attempting to put her arms around Thor. When that proved impossible she turned her excitement on Jane, the pair of them hugging and laughing at their newfound good fortunes.

“Tony!” Darcy squealed, pushing Jane towards her Asgardian beau, to run towards her gracious host as he passed by. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” she rambled, doing her best to not to hug the billionaire – as cool as he was Darcy wasn’t sure he’d appreciate being attack-hugged by the girl he gave his coffee orders to.

“No problem, kiddo. The least I can do for anyone willing to put up with mopey smurf over there. Pepper’s got movers packing up your stuff – should be here by lunch. She’ll also get some people over there and get it spotless so you get your deposit back, and whatnot. But enough about that, lemme show you your new digs.”

Darcy followed him, so excited about her new apartment that she’d almost forgotten it came with seriously grumpy drawback.

“Behave, Loki!”

“I hope your cock rots off!” Loki screamed across the room as Thor and Jane made their escape.

“Hey!” Darcy shouted, spinning on her heel to reprimand her new charge, but before she could rant at him to watch his mouth, the God of Mischief convulsed as though electrocuted and fell against the wall gasping for breath. “Oh my God!” she cried, jumping back. “Was that me? Oh my god, I’m so sorry!”

Darcy made to reach for him only for Loki to try and push her away.

“Get away from me you pathetic mortal!”

“Aw, I think he likes you, Lewis,” Tony quipped, smirking at the belligerent god.

“Oh, do shut up you ridiculous, drunken buffoon.”

The words were no sooner out of Loki’s mouth when he was felled by another surge of electricity.

“This is even better than my taser!” Darcy squeaked. “I mean, I’m sorry.”

“Hit him again.”

“Tony, no, I’m not a sadist. Hey,” she said, standing in front of Loki’s crumpled form, hands on her knees so she could look him square in the eye. “Don’t be mean to me or my friends and I won’t zap you. It’s that simple, okay?”

She held out her hand with every intention of helping Loki off the floor. He regarded her hand with suspicion before his eyes drifted to the hint of cleavage she had inadvertently put on display.

“Really?” she said with a loud sigh and a severe eye roll. “It’s official; all men, across all realms, are the same.”

Darcy stood up straight and put away the girls, leaving Loki to his own devices as she herded Tony towards her new room.

“Alright, so because of the bondage thing you and Reindeer Games have got going on you have to bunk in the room next to his. Thor’s on one side, and you, sexy librarian, are on the other.”

He pushed open the door with a flourish and left Darcy to check it out while he went and did other super important billionaire philanthropist things. If Darcy was honest she was a little bit disappointed. She had been expecting penthouse style luxury but what she got was more akin to a four-star dorm room. It was smaller than her apartment, but that, she supposed, was because it didn’t have a proper kitchen or dining area – both of those amenities were communal and down the other end of the floor. And it was completely bare except for an awesome looking flat screen tv on one wall, and a decent sized mini fridge slotted into some built-in shelving on another. She stepped through the only other doorway in the room past a nice little walk-in wardrobe, to the decent sized bathroom on the other side of it.

“Thank God,” she mumbled to herself, as she stepped into the bathtub and made herself comfortable. “For a moment there I thought the bathrooms were going to be communal as well. Can you imagine?” she said to no one in particular. “I would be brought up on sexual harassment charges so fast.”

“What are you doing?” a haughty not-really-British accent drawled.

Darcy twisted around to find the God of Emo-ness, who she had momentarily forgotten, again, leaning against the doorframe, his leather and metal clad arms crossed over his chest, staring at her like she was a child eating paste.

“Just checking out my new tub. I hate it when the bathtub’s too small. Can you fit in your tub? You’re ridiculously tall, so probably not. That’s sad. Maybe you can ask Tony for a bigger one.”

Loki blinked. Slowly.

“Do you always talk this much?”

“Pretty much. Unless I’m in the lab and Jane & Co start talking science. I can’t compete with that.”

“Then what is your purpose?” he asked snidely.

“I’m Jane’s helper monkey. Just like I’m your babysitter. Lucky me, I get to look after two of the smartest people in the building because they can’t be trusted to look after themselves.”

She gave him a megawatt smile. Loki replied with a sneer, which she promptly ignored. Darcy looked over her newest responsibility, sizing him up and calculating the amount of grief he was going to cause her, before relenting with a sigh. When life threw weird science at her, Darcy Lewis adapted. When life threw aliens at her, Darcy Lewis adapted. And when life chained her to a formerly homicidal Norse god, Darcy Lewis mother-flipping adapted. So that just left one question.

“What do you want to do today?”

“Excuse me?”

“What do you want to do today? It’s Friday, the boss and the big brother have taken a long weekend, which means I’m not doing any more work until Monday and you get to let your hair down, metaphorically speaking,” she added, eyeing off his ridiculous black mane. “Tony say’s my stuff’s going to be delivered by about lunchtime, so we can chill out here, order in, and you can mope in your room while I unpack. Or… We can leave the tower and hit the town, and I can unpack later. Whaddya say, Rapunzel? Wanna let down your hair?”

Loki blinked – slowly – again, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did so.

“Ignoring the fact that I could not understand half of what you just said, am I to understand it that you are giving me a choice in where you drag me with this infernal shackle?”

“Yeah… What does Thor normally do? Just pretends you don’t exist and goes about his day? That’s rude. But getting back to the point – yes, I’m giving you choice. Do you want to stay in or go out,” she said, miming the directions with her hand, over and over, until Loki made a decision.

“I wish to leave the tower.”

“Awesome. I’ll get my bag while you get changed. Wait, can’t do that. I’ll wait for you to get changed, and then we can go get my bag from the lab.”

“Why would I need to get changed?”

“Do you really need to ask why you can’t wear your leather supervillain ensemble amongst the civilians? Mass panic, mostly. Which is something we should try and avoid on our Thane-given day off.”

Loki glanced down at his clothes and shuffled awkwardly. It was subtle but Darcy was the queen of awkward and she noticed it.

“Do you have any other clothes?” she asked cautiously.

“Given full access to my powers I would simply materialise them on my person.”

“I can’t help you there. Thor didn’t let me in on all the secrets of the magic bracelets. But you can’t honestly tell me you’ve been living in that get up since you got here. What do you wear to bed?”

“Nothing.”

“Wow, that mental image isn’t leaving in a hurry. Um…” Darcy blushed, not willing to meet Loki’s gaze, but she was certain he was smirking at her. “So, no one has given you any clothes since you got here?”

“There are some basic garments but they all have Stark’s name on them.”

“Yeah, that is a bit of a deal breaker. Okay, let’s go raid Thor’s wardrobe,” Darcy announced, making her way to the absent Asgardian’s bedroom.

“I have no desire to wear Thor’s hand-me-downs,” Loki spat.

“They’re not hand-me-downs, we’re stealing them,” Darcy clarified, hoping the distinction would appeal to her ward. “And it’s this or your invisible pj’s, but like I said before, we kinda wanna avoid that whole mass panic thing.”

“Very well, mortal,” he sighed, following her.

“It’s Darcy. Not ‘mortal’.”

** *** **

Eventually Darcy convinced Loki to put on a pair of Thor’s jeans and a white t-shirt. They were ill-fitting, the jeans held in place with a securely fastened belt and the t-shirt had been stretched to its limited and sat loosely on Loki’s slimmer form, but he looked more or less normal. Except…

“You have to do something with your hair.”

“And what is wrong with my hair?”

“Well, it’s one of your signature traits, and we wanna be incognito. And two, it’s just weird. Nobody has hair like that. Can you tie it back?” she asked, producing a hair elastic from her pocket. He looked at her again with that whole ant-boot glare and Darcy just rolled her eyes and ushered him to sit on the end of Thor’s bed, kneeling on the mattress behind him. She ran her fingers through his hair, pulling it back, pausing when she noticed the way Loki was gripping the bedframe and holding his breath. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“You know, I thought the God of Lies would sound more convincing when he’s fibbing.”

“People don’t touch me,” he confessed quietly after a moment’s hesitation.

“Oh… I’m sorry. I won’t be long.” She quickly pulled all of his hair back, twisting it around and tying it off in a ‘man bun’. “There.” She pulled him to his feet and stood him before a mirror, watching with amusement as he regarding his reflection with distaste. “I know it’s a little more hobo chic that you’d like but at least you don’t look like a supervillain anymore. Come on, I’ll grab my bag and we can go.” She stopped at the door, closing it as she turned back to Loki. “Just so you know, anything that happens on Darcy Time – unless you’re causing trouble and I need to report it – stays between us. I promise, okay?”

Darcy sighed again as Loki took to staring at her like she was some curious artefact. She threw open the door and wandered back down to the lab, and it wasn’t until they got into the elevator that Loki spoke to her again.

“Thank you, Miss Lewis.”

“You’re welcome. And it’s still just Darcy.”


	2. Chapter 2

An hour later Darcy and the indentured god were surrounded by plates of dumplings, and whilst Loki’s own plate was piled high, Darcy was trying to restrain herself. It was first restaurant on their tour of Chinatown and Darcy wanted to avoid sitting idly by watching Loki gorge himself two restaurants down the track.

“Okay, verdict. You likey?”

“It’s quite palatable,” Loki managed in between mouthfuls.

“Palatable? That’s offensive. These dumplings are award winning, and you’re throwing them back like the secret ingredient’s crack. So be honest – I won’t tell anyone that you adore Midgardian food, Scouts Honour.”

“Fine, it is delicious,” he admitted, reaching for another plate. He had been confused by chopsticks for a whole minute before making it look like he had been using them all his life. “I especially like these pan fried ones. I would recommend taking another one now before I finish them off.”

“Wow, if it wasn’t for the matching Asgardian appetites you’d never guess you and Thor were brothers,” Darcy mused and she pinched one last pork bun.

“We’re not brothers,” Loki replied, his pleasant mood dissipating instantly.

“Why do you keep saying that? Is it because you’re blue?”

“And what do you know of that?” he asked sharply.

“Not much,” Darcy admitted. “I’ve overheard bits and pieces, but the biggest hint was Tony. Ever since that mission in Sao Paolo he’s been giving you blue or winter themed nicknames. So what’s the deal?”

“You truly don’t know?”

“No. No one’s told me anything specific, and I didn’t ask them to explain it. I’d much rather hear it from you. … Seriously, dude, why do you keep looking at me like I’m the weirdest person you know? I’m absolutely positive I’m not.”

“You are forthright when everyone else seems to enjoy being ambiguous or just plain snide. It is disconcerting.”

“I’d apologise, but I don’t want to.” That got a smile. Well, a half smile. “So, can you really turn blue? What’s that about?”

“I’m Jotun,” Loki admitted, his gaze fixed on his plate.

“And what’s a Jotun?”

“A Frost Giant.”

“And what’s a Frost Giant?”

“What does it sound like, you stupid girl?” Loki snapped.

“Well, excuse me, your majesty, but until recently Earth couldn’t prove there were little green men out there, let alone giant blue ones, so you’ll have to forgive me for wanting a more comprehensive description.”

“Jotuns are of Jotunheim,” Loki growled, stabbing at a dumpling. “It is a miserable realm of snow and ice, which they can manipulate, to a degree. They are considered violent and barbaric, and are the sworn enemies of Asgard. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

“Wait, they can manipulate ice? Can you manipulate ice?”

“If need be.”

“Huh, as superpowers goes, that’s pretty cool. No pun intended.”

“You are a ridiculous mortal,” he spat. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“If you don’t like what I’m saying you could always leave. Oh no, wait, you can’t.”

Loki growled and shoved his plate away in disgust, inadvertently knocking an empty steamer off the table.

“Well, I think we’re done with dumplings,” Darcy announced, waving a waitress over. “How about we go try pho. Pho makes everything better.”

** *** **

A few hours, and half of Chinatown later, Darcy and Loki returned to the tower, leftovers in hand, but in Darcy’s case it was more like her actual lunch. There was something about watching a sullen not-quite-Asgardian work his way through a menu that made her lose her appetite. Between stuffing his face and being his usual terse self, Loki wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but Darcy could talk enough for the both of them, avoiding frosty subjects, and to her surprise he only gave her the ant-boot look three more times the whole time they were out. The elevator doors opened onto the residential floor and Darcy headed straight for the kitchen, rummaging through a drawer until she found a black marker, piquing Loki’s curiosity.

“What are you doing?”

“Marking my territory,” she replied, writing her name of her bag of takeout containers before passing the pen to him. “If you don’t put your name on it people might take it.”

“Why would people take food that does not belong to them?”

“Because apparently some people need to be reminded of simple etiquette rules like ‘don’t eat food that doesn’t belong to you’ or ‘don’t attempt to subjugate a planet’...”

“Yes, you’re very amusing,” Loki drawled as he scribbled his name in runic letters on his bag before allowing Darcy to stuff them in the fridge.

“Ms Lewis,” came the voice from above.

“Yeah, Friday?”

“Most of your belongings have been deposited in your room. Everything else, including the larger furniture items, has been placed in a storage space on Basement Level 5, which can be accessed by you at any time.”

“Thank you, Friday. C’mon,” she instructed Loki, who followed her no further than his own room, leaving Darcy to face the small mountain of boxes by herself. She located her linens and made her bed first, trying not to think about the movers stripping her bed and picking up her floordrobe. And speaking of, her next task was to sort her clothes into piles of dirty, clean, and haven’t-worn-in-forever-so-might-as-well-put-them-into-storage. It was at this time that the God of Mischief darkened her doorway once more.

“Bored already?” she asked, not wanting to acknowledge the fact that, yes, she had been sniffing a t-shirt to determine its cleanliness.

“Staring at the same spot on the ceiling becomes tiresome after a while.”

“Well…” Darcy prodded. “You wanna help me unpack, because staring is not helping, and if you’re not helping you can go back to your room.”

He gave her one of those strange looks again, one that made Darcy want to shuffle out of his line of sight, before stepping over the threshold and glancing around the room.

“See those boxes marked ‘books’? See that shelving? See if you can’t merge the two.”

Loki, with a strange look of amusement, walked over the bookshelves and opened the first box. He took out a handful of books – _seriously? A handful? Why do gods have such big hands? No, brain that wasn’t an invitation to start illustrating your theory_ – and dumped them on a shelf, and then another handful.

“Hey! Don’t be an ass – I _will_ tase you!”

“Whatever is the matter? I am putting the books on the shelf as requested.”

“You’re being an ass, and you know it. Put them on the shelf properly. Novels at the top, text books at the bottom, all sorted by authors surname.” Loki smirked at her, a handful of books poised to be dumped on a shelf. Darcy extended her gold banded arm towards him like she was aiming one of Iron Man’s gauntlets. “Don’t test me, Mischief. Treat my books with respect or spend the night convulsing in a pool of your own drool. Your choice.”

He smiled then, the first proper smile she’d seen all day, and placed the books on the shelf properly, quickly sorting them into alphabetical order. He fixed up his first few handfuls and then went back to the boxes.

“Thank you,” Darcy said quietly, returning to her laundry.

She left a laundry bag of dirty clothes and a suitcase full of storage clothes by the door and started moving everything else to her wardrobe. At some point she noticed Loki lurking in the doorway and turned to find him leaning against the door frame holding a very thick book.

“ _You_ have read _this_?” he asked incredulously, turning the heavy law book over in his hands.

“Not the whole thing,” Darcy admitted. “But I read a few sections that were pertinent to a paper I was working on. Kind of accidentally stole it from the library, and when I realised I was too busy and/or too embarrassed to return it.”

“Why would a helper monkey such as yourself need to refer to such material?”

“Well,” Darcy glared. “Before I was a helper monkey I was a political science major at Culver University. Do Asgardians have universities, or schools in general?”

“As princes of Asgard, Thor and I had the best tutors from the best collegiums in the realm.”

“Well, good for you. I was a student at a Midgardian university studying political science – politics, government, law,” she added pointing to the book.

“You are no longer a student of politics?”

“No, I graduated a while back. When Thor first touched down I was interning with Jane to earn course credits to finish my degree, and then, BAM. Norse gods. Aliens. Avengers. Dark elves. After all that the usual career paths someone like me would take seemed unimportant compared to working with you guys. I mean, I know I’m not important here, and some days I have no idea what difference I make…” she added offhandedly.

“You think you serve no purpose?”

“Helper monkey, remember,” she replied, sticking out her tongue at him.

Loki smirked and went back to unpacking Darcy’s books.

“Perhaps with your extensive knowledge of your world’s politics you might be of use to me in my next nefarious scheme to take over Midgard. I would reward you, of course, by making you my chambermaid.”

“Oh, haha. Very tempting. But if I was going to take over the world I’d want to do it like Beyoncé.”

“And who is Beyoncé? What land do they rule?”

Darcy squealed and rushed over to her moving boxes, searching through them until she located her iPod dock. A moments later the opening bars of “Crazy In Love” poured out of the speakers and Darcy was up on her bed dancing – or at least jumping – along to the music.

“This,” she said, when she finally got down off her bed. “Is Queen Bey, one of the most popular and influential artists of the last decade. Ha! Look at me, using my degree!”

“And how is this noise related to your education?” Loki winced.

“I am totally acting like a cultural attaché _and_ fostering international relations with space royalty – how cool is that!”

“How cool, indeed,” Loki drawled, trying not to smile as he returned to the bookshelves.

** *** **

“Alright, I’m calling a time out,” Darcy announced once she had emptied most of the boxes. There was still a mess to be sorted out, but Darcy’s appetite had returned and Loki hadn’t been any help since he’d finished with the books, content with standing in the corner reading. Loki followed Darcy out, nose still in the book, whilst Darcy reheated some noodles. They sat at the dining table and talked, well Darcy did a least, about the book he was reading (Machiavelli’s The Prince) and recommended a few more from her personal library.

“You should really start with Aristotle and Plato, those guys are like the great-great-granddaddies of modern thinking. Ooh! And Animal Farm by Orwell, you might get a kick out of that one. Well, I’ll get a kick out of you reading it, anyway.”

Then she got distracted by how amazing her lunch was and the topic of conversation quickly switched to food, what restaurant he really enjoyed earlier, and all the other cuisines Darcy just had introduce him to. She mentioned Italian and Loki joined the conversation finally stating he was quite partial to pepperoni pizza.

“But Italian food is so much more than pizza. Don’t get me wrong, pizza is amazing, but pasta’s even better, and there’s just as many different ways to make it. What kind of monster would limit your exposure to Italian cuisine to just pizza?”

“Hey kids, staying out of trouble I hope,” Tony remarked, sauntering over from the elevators to check on them in the guise of raiding the fridge.

“Nevermind,” Darcy muttered as she and her lunch buddy sharing a smirk.

“Jesus, Darcy - ‘The Prince’?” Tony scoffed upon spying Loki’s reading material, glass of water in hand. “The guy’s the walking definition of Machiavellian. Why not have him read something lighter, like the ‘Communist Manifesto’?”

“I’ve got a copy, if you want to read it,” Darcy advised Loki, disregarding Tony entirely.

“Nice, Lewis. Real nice. And that’s a good look for you, by the way, Reindeer Games. Very Viking hipster, I love it. You should borrow Darcy’s glasses sometime, just to complete the look.”

“Tony,” Darcy warned as Loki bristled and bit his tongue. “Are you done being annoying, because we were having a perfectly civil one-sided conversation before you showed up.”

“I think I’ve got a bit more annoying left in the tank.”

“Save it for Pepper, we’re good here.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she replied, shooing him away with her chopsticks.

“Alright, I’ll be in the lab with Bruce if you need anything.”

Loki glared at Tony’s back until he was out of sight and then regarded Darcy curiously before returning to his book.

“What? You’re on Darcy Time. No one gets to annoy you but me,” she said, loudly slurping her noodles as if to prove her point.


	3. Chapter 3

By the end of the day, after Darcy almost had her room set up just the way she wanted, and had Loki help her take a few odds and ends down to her storage unit, and haul her favourite comfy armchair back up (not that it looked like it took any strength at all from Loki). After that she left Loki to his own devices which seemed to mostly consist of him working his way through her library.

“Hey,” Darcy called, rapping her knuckles on Loki’s doorframe. “I was just going to reheat something for dinner. Does this magical leash thingy stretch to the kitchen?”

“No,” Loki grimaced, swinging his long legs off his bed and setting his (Darcy’s) book down. “Thor once forgot about me in pursuit of a midnight snack and I ended up being pulled from my bed and thrown face first into the wall,” he gestured at a spot in the corner closest to the kitchen where the paint looked slightly newer.

“No! Not your pretty face!”

Loki blinked.

“I did not just say that,” Darcy muttered, rushing away.

“You think me ‘pretty’, Ms Lewis?” Loki teased, following her into the kitchen. “I’m offended. I am a dark and sinister mass murderer – I don’t feel that ‘pretty’ is a complimentary descriptor.”

“I didn’t say you were pretty, I said your face was pretty. Everything else is all broody and evil,” she replied casually, though she refused to look at him.

They ate in silence – Loki smirked and Darcy tried not to blush – and then returned to their rooms, Loki offering Darcy an overly smug “Goodnight, Ms Lewis,” as he closed his door behind him.

Darcy groaned and buried her face in her pillow. _Nice one, Lewis. Flirting with your charge on the first day? Totally against regulations. And did you forget he is, on occasion, maniacal psychopath? Idiot._

** *** **

“What?” Darcy whined as an incessant knocking dragged her from a deep sleep.

“Ms Lewis?” Loki called, stepping inside her room.

“Darcy.”

“Darcy. I wish to go to the kitchen and to prepare something to break my fast.”

“What time is it?”

“Eleven. I have waited as long as I could, hoping you would rise at some point before midday, but the gnawing in my stomach will not cease. Would you make some effort to get out of bed?”

“Alright, alright! Stop talking! Jesus!” she yelled, throwing off her blankets, too tired to remember she was only wearing an oversized ex-boyfriend jersey and not much else. She blearily followed Loki to the kitchen, leaning against a bench, her head in her hands, and her eyes closed against the vile sunlight pouring in from the nothing-but-glass wall as he fixed himself something to eat.

“Is it usual for mortals to spend the day abed?”

“If they binge watched a season of Game of Thrones and didn’t go to bed until really early in the morning, then yeah,” she mumbled in reply.

“I do not understand.”

“Game of Thrones. It’s a tv show. You know what tv is?”

“Your entertainments.”

“Mm. I watched, like, 8 hour-long episodes in a row. And now I wish I hadn’t. Are you done yet?”

Darcy didn’t wait for a response before stumbling back to her room.

“Oh, and Ms Lewis,” Loki called, stopping her as she reached her door.

“What?”

Loki paused for effect, taking his time to eye her up and down. “You look very pretty this morning,”

Darcy glanced down and squealed, trying to pull the jersey down over her bare thighs as she retreated into her bedroom.

A few hours later, after the embarrassment had passed and Darcy had officially woken up and taken a shower, it was her turn to drag Loki to the kitchen. She ate the combo of reheated chow mein and gong bao chicken in front of her laptop, content to while away a few hours scrolling through her multiple (SHIELD monitored) social media accounts, but eventually the nagging voice of adult responsibilities got the best of her and she did the last of her unpacking and tidying to a soundtrack of 80’s divas. She turned off her music and sat on her recently made bed wondering what to do next. If this were any other Saturday she’d probably still be stuck in the lab with Jane, with half a dozen sciencey people running around doing sciencey things. She hadn’t spent a great deal of time up on the residential level before now, but she’d come to the conclusion that without a lot of people in residence it was rather eerie. The silence began to grate on her so she hopped up to go annoy Loki.

“Whatcha doing?”

“I’m reading,” he drawled from his standard spot, sitting up against the headboard, his long legs stretched out on his bed. “Have you misplaced your glasses?”

“Haha, no. I was just trying to make polite conversation.”

“Inane conversation, seems more apt.”

“I think I prefer it when you’re being creepy and flirty.”

“I think I prefer you barely conscious.”

“Ouch.”

Loki smirked. “Is there something you wanted, Ms Lewis?

“Apart for you to stop calling me ‘Ms Lewis’? No,” she admitted. “I was just bored. Doesn’t the silence bug you?” she asked after a minute of it.

“What silence? Between your incessant babbling and that horrific noise you call music, there hasn’t been any.”

“Well, what do you call music? Like classical stuff? Old school trumpets? Harps? What?”

Loki sighed and crossed his legs, placing his book and his hands in his lap, giving Darcy his undivided attention.

“Asgardian minstrels often played harps, yes. And lutes, pipes, and horns. Will that be all?”

“Uhuh,” Darcy replied quietly as a project formed in her mind. “I’m totally going to make you a playlist. Start off with some folk music, and then some classical, maybe even some old school opera. I’ll have you appreciating Midgardian music before you know it.”

“That is not necessary.”

“Can’t hear you!” Darcy called from the hallway.

Loki stared at the space Darcy had previously occupied and shook his head. He opened his book back up (Darcy’s second-hand and barely held together copy of ‘Animal Farm’) and tried to push Darcy’s randomness from his mind. As long as she was occupied she wasn’t annoying him, which was more than he could say for the time he spent shackled to Thor. Darcy left him to his own devices for hours at a time, giving him solitude and privacy, which he desired almost as much as his freedom and the return of his powers. He reread a sentence for a third time and pinched the bridge of his nose. Curse that stupid mortal, he thought as the unending silence began to irritate him. A moment later music began to filter through the wall again – delicate strings, thank the Norns - and Loki could get back to his reading.

** *** **

By the time Darcy stopped to take a break from compiling a playlist of the best classical composers and googling obscure folk music (and debating whether to put the soundtrack to Vikings in there for shits and giggles) it was past her usual feeding time. With a groan she unhunched herself and stretched, contemplating taking a bath in her new tub before grabbing something to eat and returning to her little pet project, when the voice of God demanded her attention.

“Ms Lewis, there is a situation in Iceland that requires any available Avengers.”

“That’s nice, Friday. But why are you telling me? Did I get a promotion?”

“No, Ms Lewis. Thor is the closest, but he has requested Loki's assistance. A quinjet is being prepared so that you may escort Loki to meet him.”

“Oh, okay.”

Darcy quickly put on a pair of boots and a warm coat and grabbed her bag, rushing out of her room and straight into the broad chest of Loki, already dressed in his battle gear. After quickly reminding herself that she did not, in fact, have a leather kink, she followed him to the roof where a quinjet was waiting to take them to the handoff site, which turned out to be a Helicarrier hovering over the North Atlantic. Much to Darcy’s dismay she got to see exactly 1% of it as Thor met them in the hanger bay, and without so much as a “Hey, how are ya?” Darcy found herself bracelet-less and about to be sent back to New York. Loki hesitated at the foot of the quinjet’s ramp, Thor waiting impatiently in the background.

“Thank you for your company, Ms Lewis. Darcy,” he amended after the woman in question gave him an exasperated look. “It was… interesting.”

** *** **

“Hey, Friday,” Darcy called when she returned to the tower, forgoing a bath and even dinner in favour of going straight to bed.

“Yes, Ms Lewis?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have Loki’s measurements on file, would you?”

“I can extrapolate them from security footage.”

“Awesome. Text me the details.”

** ** **

By the time Loki had returned from the Iceland mission the following night, there were several bags of clothes and shoes at the foot of his bed, as well as an iPod and earbuds sitting atop his nightstand, along with a note:

_Hey Loki, I hope you like the music. I also went and got you a few basics to tide you over until I get to babysit you again. I’m thinking Italian food and clothes shopping – Stark Industries is buying._

_– Darcy._


	4. Chapter 4

It had been a few weeks after Darcy had first babysat Loki, and she had hardly spent any time in his presence since. Avenger work kept him busy and when saw him in the tower he was always in a foul mood for having to suffer Thor, and any number of Thor’s teammates, company. But occasionally Darcy saw him drowning out dinner table talk by putting in his earbuds, which made her smile. Eventually though, Jane wanted to forgo her first love for her second again and had Thor sheepishly asking Darcy over breakfast if she would take the burden from him for the day.

“Sure thing,” Darcy replied holding her arm out to take the bracelet, shaking her arm out when the magic made it feel all tingly.

Loki didn’t utter a word one way or the other regarding the handover, but actively ignored Thor as he pleaded with him to behave for ‘Lady Darcy’. Darcy let him pretend to sulk, waiting until the dining room was devoid of Avengers before attempting to engage him in conversation.

“So, you up for a day of shopping?”

“It is not necessary,” he replied quietly, stirring his cereal absently. “The garments you procured for me are sufficient.”

“Those are just basics,” she replied, gesturing at his current outfit, blue jeans and a grey t-shirt. The lighter denim was a mistake, Darcy had realised too late. The God of Mischief looked peculiar in anything but darker colour schemes, something she had hoped to remedy. “Don’t you want a bigger wardrobe selection? Don’t you want to do the selecting?”

“I am a glorified prisoner, what does it matter what I wear?”

“It should matter, ‘clothes maketh the man’, as they say. You can dress like a ‘glorified prisoner’, a Norse hipster, or the God of Lies, Chaos and miscellaneous Mischief. Your choice.”

“And why do you concern yourself, Ms Lewis?”

“I’m tethered to you, remember?” she replied, waving her bangled arm about. “Your happiness is my happiness.”

“And you think going to the marketplace will make me happy?”

“They’re called department stores. And are you happy now?”

Loki replied with a blank stare.

“Then what have you got to lose?”

** *** **

“No.”

“C’mon, Loki. You need a haircut.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Trust me, please? Pepper’s Pepper dropped Tony’s name and credit card to get you this appointment. It’s a ridiculously high end salon; they won’t stuff it up.”

“It’s not a matter of them ‘stuffing it up’; it’s simply that I have no desire to have my hair cut.”

“Why not?”

“Why?” Loki shot back. “In Asgard it is not uncommon for men to wear their hair long.”

“Well, we are not in Asgard, in case you hadn’t noticed. And you’re an Avenger for crying out loud. You spend half your week battling the forces of douchiness - doesn’t your hair get in the way?”

“No,” he replied after hesitating for a millisecond.

“C’mon,” she insisted, walking up to the salon. “You’ve got the appointment so at least come in and get a shampoo and one of those awesome scalp massages.”

Loki scowled and followed her in. He could not walk in the opposite direction, no matter how much he wished to. He remained moody and unenthusiastic about the whole thing until the scalp massage, after ten minutes of which he looked so relaxed he could have slid off the chair into a puddle on the salon floor. Though Darcy believed the fact that the shampoo girl had her boobs in his face the entire time may have been a contributing factor to his improved mood.

“So, what are we thinking today?” asked the purple-haired stylist, who had introduced herself as “Fiona, but with a ‘Ph’ instead of an ‘F’, and an ‘e’ instead of an ‘i’”, toying with Loki’s damp hair.

“Well, I think he should get some serious length taken off it, but his royal poutiness here wants to keep it long,” Darcy advised from the seat next to Loki.

“I wore it short as a youth, and that was a long time ago,” Loki added darkly.

“Fiiiiine,” Darcy sighed. “Just a trim then.”

The stylist stared at Loki’s reflection in the mirror, scrunching his hair in her hands.

“Your hair has some nice natural curl-“

“No.” The word was uttered so sharply it cut the Pheona’s sentence in half.

Darcy snorted with laughter. “Oh my god, you’re such a diva. Listen Phe, when you’re done we’re going to need a straightener, and whatever products you’d recommend so that Loki can keep his ‘do sleek and on fleek, mkay?”

“Absolutely,” Pheona replied nervously, trying to avoid the death stare waiting for her in the mirror.

Darcy kept the conversation going, or at least amused herself, as Pheona carefully chipped away at the ends of Loki’s hair.

“You know, next time, if you’re feeling adventurous, you should totally get, like, a Mohawk/undercut thing, you know?”

“No, I do not know.”

“You know, like, shaved really short along the sides, and the front slicked back. Or maybe just one side shaved. Totally nu goth. What do you think, Phe?”

“I think Loki would look great with any hairstyle,” Pheona replied diplomatically.

“Naturally,” Loki agreed, ignoring Darcy’s overly dramatic eye roll.

** *** **

‘Just a trim’ and several black-is-the-new-black boutiques later, Darcy and Loki returned to the tower, arms laden with shopping bags, with several more to be delivered at a later date. It had been a trial and a half, between putting up with Loki’s moods swings and keeping overly attentive shop girls out of his changing rooms, and Darcy was all but spent.

“My feet are killing me,” she groaned as she sat down on the nearest piece of furniture.

“So you have said every ten minutes for the past hour. And yet you insisted we keep shopping.”

“Your wardrobe was incomplete, we couldn’t stop. Speaking of,” she said, jumping out of her chair with a sudden rush of energy. “Why don’t you go put on some of your new clothes and then we’ll go grab some Italian for lunch.”

“Why would I change my clothes? I have not stained the ones I’m wearing.”

“Well, one: I wanna see what they look like since you refused to come out of the change rooms. And two…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t really have a two, I just want to check out your new duds. Please?” she begged in an irritatingly high tone. “I promise I won’t call you pretty.”

“If it gets us to lunch faster,” Loki conceded, disappearing into his bedroom as Darcy loitered in the hallway.

Loki reappeared several minutes later dressed in all black, from the shiny, snake skin shoes to the overly complicated coat he’d purchased from a nu goth boutique where the mannequins had demonic antlers poking out of the top of their creepy, expressionless heads. He tied his hair back in much the same fashion as Darcy had on their first lunch trip and awaited her approval, rolling his eyes as she giggled and clapped her hands.

“You look great,” she assured him, dragging him back to the elevators. “And now, pasta!”

** *** **

Lunch had been reasonably successfully, as far as Darcy was concerned. She’d had bruschetta followed by an amazing baked cannelloni. Loki, on the other hand, went through an entire antipasto platter (and demanded the tower stock up on feta stuffed olives and pancetta), followed by the spaghetti marinara, plus both of their desserts.

“I can’t believe you’re still hungry,” Darcy laughed as they took the long way back to Avengers Tower through the park, ice creams in hand.

“Put it down to my alien constitution,” Loki smirked.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

At her remark Loki’s expression soured slightly.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Darcy whined. “Why do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“You know what. The moment you get caught having fun, enjoying your time on our lovely little planet, you shut down. It’s okay to not hate it here. Your situation may not be awesome, but you can still enjoy the perks.”

“I’m stuck on a foreign, backwards little planet, chained to my irritating brother, for the most part,” he added, giving Darcy the smallest of smiles. “Forced to risk my life on a regular basis for little reward or respect. Please enlighten me as to these perks you speak of.”

“Ice cream, Italian food, dumplings, iTunes, Netflix,” Darcy replied, counting them out of on her fingers. “And me, of course.”

Loki snorted and turned his attention to his ice cream.

“If you don’t think so I could always tell Thor I don’t want to babysit you anymore. Just imagine it,” she teased. “You get to follow him around like a puppy, play third wheel on all his romantic dinners with Jane, watch them make googily eyes at each other over…”

Loki stopped in his tracks, cringing as he saw it all too clearly.

“Don’t.”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t leave me to that imbeciles care.”

Darcy turned, raised an eyebrow, smiled, and waited expectantly.

Loki glared at her until she waved the magic bracelet-come-taser under his nose.

“Please,” he said tightly. “Don’t make me accompany them to dinner again. The last time I was forced to listen to their drivel it put me off food for a week.”

“We can’t have that, can we?” Darcy laughed, taking a bite of her ice cream.

They fell into a comfortable silence as they finished their ice-creams and returned to the tower, and it seemed to Darcy like everything was going well… Until the doors opened on the residential level and they found it teaming with Avengers and miscellaneous SHIELD agents. Apparently Tony had announced an early quitting time so that happy hour could begin. That, and he was keen to avenge his wounded ego after losing to Hawkeye at their last team poker game.

Loki stiffened as all eyes turned to him.

“Hey, how about I get you that book you were asking about?” Darcy suggested quietly, her hand at his elbow as she tried herd him towards their rooms.

“Hey, Lewis!” Tony called from the head of the table. “You play poker? The Trickster can watch, that is if he isn’t needed back in the Matrix,” he added, smirking as he eyed Loki’s new outfit.

“He’s not Neo,” Clint countered, sipping his beer. “He’s obviously Marilyn Manson’s lawyer. What do you think, Doc?”

“It’s from Sears Supervillain Casual range, isn’t?” Bruce queried, counting out his plastic chips. “Evil on a budget, I like it.”

Loki blood boiled as the tittering of the group washed over him, storming off to his room, not caring whether the electric fence that was Darcy was following him.


	5. Chapter 5

Darcy was rummaging through the communal kitchen, searching for a box of chocolate chip cookies she was certain Steve had stashed somewhere, her tablet under one arm, when she heard Thor approaching.

“Darcy, do you have any plans this evening?”

“Nah, just staying in and catching up on some work. You and Jane going out?”

“Yes, if you wouldn’t mind watching Loki for me.”

“No problem,” she replied, turning from the cupboards to take Thor’s arm. She sighed as Loki ignored her completely, pushing past Thor to slump on the couch in the sweats and t-shirt he had been living in during his downtime since their ill-fated shopping trip a week prior. “Still not talking to me, huh?” she asked after Thor had taken his leave.

Loki turned on the television and stared blankly ahead, not really absorbing what was on the screen as he channel surfed.

“You really think you can ignore me forever?” Darcy asked, sitting down next to him. “You haven’t even experienced me at my most annoying. You will crack, Odinson.”

“You made me look like a fool,” he hissed through clenched teeth, the reference to his adoptive father forcing a reaction.

“Says who?”

“Everyone,” he muttered petulantly.

“Let’s go through ‘everyone’, shall we? Tony dresses like a teenager most days, and the days he doesn’t is because Pepper laid out his clothes for him. Bruce buys his clothes by the pound from thrift stores – and most of them are two sizes too big for him. And Clint… I don’t even think I’ve ever seen Clint out of uniform before. These are not men you should be taking style criticism from.”

Loki, though he seemed to mull over her words, still refused to look at her. Darcy sighed and adjusted her position on the couch, opening a web browser on her tablet. Loki glanced at her curiously out of the corner of his eye as she typed away for a few moments before putting the device on his lap.

“Here, look at this,” Darcy demanded, pointing to a tabloid photo of them from their walk through the park. Loki looked like he was stalking down a runway whilst Darcy had been strategically blurred out.

“What is this?” Loki growled, trying to burn a hole in the screen with his glare.

“This is a paparazzi photo of you, on the internet, specifically a site called tumblr.”

“Wonderful, so my humiliation is once again global.”

“Just read the comments.”

“What?”

“Read. The. Comments.”

Upon reading the first comment Loki’s scowl disappeared. By the tenth his eyebrow was raised so high it almost hit his hairline. A minute later he cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly, his fingers ghosting over his lips.

“My, that is… rather detailed.”

“See, these are your fans, and they thought you looked hot.”

“They desire me?” Loki asked, still not quite believing it despite evidence to the contrary. “Do they not care that I have caused the deaths of so many?”

“Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome, man; Earth girls love a bad boy.”

His eyebrow went up again and the slightest hint of a smile creeped into his usually miserable expression.

“So…” Darcy said, turning on the couch, one foot tucked under her knee. “I’ll admit it’s not really a daytime look that just anyone could pull off – but you’re an alien-slash-Norse god, and you totally rock the goth aesthetic. And all those horny bastards agree with me. So, can you stop being mad at me… please?”

Loki grunted noncommittally, still absorbed in the slew of debauched comments before him. Darcy rolled her eyes and reached over for her tablet.

“Hey, no, I want to keep reading,” Loki protested.

“Well, you can go google yourself on your own tablet,” she laughed, prying her tablet from his grasp. “I’ve gotta go work – would you mind relocating?” she asked, ruffling his hair before quickly walking back to her room laughing.

“Hey!” Loki cringed, slicking his hair back to its original shape, before trailing after her.

** *** **

Darcy had been seated at her desk for no more than two minutes before Loki came barging in.

“I don’t like this Google,” he grumbled, making Darcy wince as he jabbed his Asgardian finger at his tablet. “All it’s showing me is news articles about my efforts for and against the Avengers. How do I find the page you showed me?”

Darcy took it off his hands before he broke it.

“Here,” she said, handing it back to him, the screen having gone from Google white to Tumblr blue. “You can type whatever you want to search for in there. Try ‘Loki’s Army’,” she suggested before turning back to her screen.

Loki promptly stretched out on Darcy’s bed, a salacious grin forming on his face as he scrolled through the results. Darcy rolled her eyes but as long as he kept quiet she wasn’t going to say anything. The silence lasted a whole hour before Loki’s dirty laughter interrupted her data entry.

“Do I wanna know?” she asked distractedly.

“This person, calling themselves lokilover – spelt with 5 R’s - has said, ‘He can make me kneel anytime’. The sentiment, in one form or another, is repeated quite often by those claiming to be part of my online army. I must say, it does marvels for one’s ego.”

“If you’re going to start ‘stroking your ego’, you can go back to your own room.”

Loki chuckled darkly causing Darcy to repress a shiver, thankfully Loki was too preoccupied to notice.

“How do I write back?”

“What?”

“This mortal looks ravishing in her leather undergarments,” he grinned, not taking his eyes off the screen. “I wish to reply to her comments, to thank her for her loyalty.”

Darcy snorted. “You can’t reply. You’d need an account.”

“And how do I get an account?”

“You can’t have an account, Loki.”

“And why not?” Loki asked, his defences rising at such a slight.

“Because Fury will go ape-shit, for starters. And then Tony will throw the mother of all tantrums, because Pepper flat-out refuses to let him have any social media accounts. Between the two of them they will totally ban you from the internet for life. And Tony might go to extreme lengths to sabotage you if you go rubbing in how popular you are. He’ll turn Friday against you, and that will only be the beginning. Trust me, it’s not worth the hassle. Just enjoy the worship.”

Loki returned to his previous sour mood, huffing as he continued scrolling.

“Aw, c’mon dude! I just had you talking to me again. Really?” she sighed. “Search for ‘Hawkiron’, or ‘Science Husbands’. Just do it,” she ordered when he glanced at her curiously.

“What…” Loki jaw dropped, and then his face lit up like a kid at Christmas. A kid who had just seen mommy kissing Santa Claus and figured he could blackmail the jolly bastard for better Christmas presents. “Oh, this… this is… What is this?”

“Fan fiction, fan art… People think an emo prince from space making them kneel is hot, they think two muscular Avengers using the power of their love to save the world is hot...” Darcy smirked.

“Well,” Loki blinked, turning the tablet around. “Unfortunately, I can confirm that these are not anatomically correct.”

“Ugh, dude!” Darcy cried, covering her eyes as Loki laughed. “I can never unsee that! I gave you that ammunition to use against the A-hole Team, not me!”

“I am sorry, Darcy. Thank you,” Loki smiled, going back to checking on his worshippers. “I’m sure such imagery will be quite useful in retraining the behaviours of certain individuals.”

Darcy groaned into her hands for several more minutes before trying to shake the image out of her head and returning to her spreadsheets.

“How do you know of such things?” Loki asked teasingly a moment later.

“Osmosis,” Darcy shrugged not looking up from her books.

Loki smiled. She was lying.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a few snippets of Loki and Darcy's growing friendship. I had a few other longer scenes but I wasn't sure about them and so they got cut. I might add them back in later, but for now I just need to keep this moving or I'll never finish it.

Thor knocked on Loki’s door but there was no answer. He pushed it open, calling Loki’s name but found his bedroom empty and the bed unmade. Loki couldn’t have gone far, and as the bracelet wasn’t on Thor’s wrist, there was only one other place he could be.

The door to Darcy’s room was ajar and Thor let himself in. He smirked when he saw his brother asleep in Darcy’s armchair, his legs resting on the end of her bed, and Darcy curled up on top of the blankets, snoring softly.

Loki and Darcy had been spending most of their spare time together, even without the magical shackle forcing it. Loki had even started initiated conversations with her in front of other people – Darcy had choked on her cereal the first time it happened. Their friendship mainly consisted of Darcy letting Loki raid her library whenever he wanted, continuing their culinary tour of New York, and Loki answering any and all questions Darcy had about the other realms. Darcy had also introduced Loki to Midgardian television, specifically the acting of marathoning a tv show, which had led to their current state.

“Loki,” Thor call quietly, shaking Loki’s shoulder. “Wake up.”

“No...” Loki muttered hoarsely.

“We have a team meeting. You are required to attend, brother.”

Loki groaned and forced his eyes open. “Fine,” he grumbled, rubbing life into his aching legs before stumbling into Darcy’s bathroom to get cleaned up.

“Darcy,” Thor said quietly, and then again a bit louder when she failed to reacted.

Whatever response she gave was lost in her pillow.

“Don’t bother, Thor. It’s the weekend, she won’t wake until midday.”

“I need to take the bracelet from her,” Thor murmured, wondering how he was supposed to do so if Darcy wasn’t cooperating.

“Darcy!” Loki shouted, kicking her bed, which only resulted in a muffled “fuck off” and Darcy rolling over. Loki smirked and grabbed her ankles, dragging her towards him. She reacted then, trying to strike him, but Loki simply grabbed her by the arm and hoisted her over his shoulder.

“Ready when you are, Thor,” Loki smirked, exiting the bedroom, a laughing thunder god trailing behind him.

“I hate you both,” Darcy grumbled, not bothering to struggle as Loki carried her into main area of the residential area where the rest of the Avengers where waiting.

“Jesus, Loki. I know she can talk under wet cement, but that’s no reason to kill her,” Tony said, peering over his sunglasses before asking Friday to lower the shades on all the windows. Loki didn’t take him for an early riser, so he had to assume the Man of Iron hadn’t been to bed yet.

“I didn’t kill her,” Loki replied, dumping Darcy unceremoniously on the couch. “Why would I kill the only one of you who remembers the Netflix password?”

With a bit of prodding from Darcy, Loki had gotten better at dealing with the constant jibes of his teammates. She’d pointed out to him how going straight to indignant rage only ending in him being laughed at, tased, or, on one memorable occasion pre-Darcy, sedated and tied down.

Darcy knew there was a whole storm of emotions that made Loki want to lash out whenever one the Avenger’s so much as glanced in his direction, but he wasn’t the sharing type, no matter how friendly they had gotten, so she didn’t push the subject.

“Now that we’re all here,” Captain Rogers said over a potential rebuttal from Tony. “Let’s get started. Doom’s on the move again.”

 

** *** **

 

Two hours later the smell of coffee brought Darcy back to the land of the living.

“Did I miss it?” she asked urgently, sitting bolt upright, trying to remember where she was.

“Miss what?” Loki asked, smirking at her dishevelled state.

“The end of the season. You didn’t watch it without me, did you?” she asked accusingly.

“I would never,” Loki gasped, hand over the imaginary wound in his chest. Darcy snorted and graciously accepted the offered coffee. “We were just about to start watching the last few episodes but decided to pause for a coffee break. It didn’t happen.”

“Okay, so, back to it?”

“I can’t. I have got to go on mission for a few days. Which means you can’t either.”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t watch the season final without me. I mean it, Darcy.”

“Fine,” she sighed loudly, crossing her heart and then offering her bangled hand to Thor. “I won’t watch it without you. Now, shoo, go save the world.”

Loki smirked and gave her a wink before following his brother to the quinjet bay, materialising his leather and metal ensemble upon his person as he walked.

“Thor’s gotta teach me how to let him do that,” Darcy said to her coffee.

 

** *** **

 

The quinjet arrived back at the tower and Loki was the first one out, practically running to the elevator bank.

“Slow down, Loki,” Thor called as he jogged to catch up, just making it inside before the doors shut. “Careful, brother. Or did you wish to be crushed in this metal box when the distance between us became too great?”

Loki shrugged off his brothers comments and changed his clothing with what little magic Thor permitted him off mission. The second the doors opened Loki pushed Thor out, calling Darcy’s name.

“What? What happened? Who got hurt?” Darcy cried, rushing out of her bedroom in a panic, wearing naught but her bedclothes and her glasses askew. “What the hell?” she demanded, when it became clear that no one was dying.

“Hurry up!” Loki growled, shoving Thor’s arm towards Darcy. The second the handover was done he shooed the bemused Thor away and grabbed Darcy by the shoulders, turning her about-face.

“What the hell has gotten into you, Loki?” Darcy asked as he tried to herd her back to her room.

“Stark has been tormenting me with spoilers all mission. We need to watch the finale. Right now.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, sure,” Darcy replied all too quickly.

Loki froze. “You watched it without me.”

“No! Of course not,” Darcy scoffed.

“I can tell when you’re lying, Darcy!” Loki shouted after her.

 

** *** **

 

“I can’t believe you got yourself grounded,” Darcy muttered, for the tenth time in as many minutes. “I made plans,” she seethed, smacking Loki’s head as she paced behind the couch. “I had tickets to see Hamilton - American history _and_ hiphop. Do you know how long I had to wait for tickets?!” she yelled, smacking him again.

“It’s not as if I wanted to get ‘grounded’,” Loki replied irritably, attempting to focus on the television in the living area and not the bespectacled lab assistant ranting behind him.

“Oh, you just thought that magically painting the quinjet mid-flight would get you a pat on the head?” Darcy all but shouted back, smacking him again for added emphasis.

“It was camouflaged!” Loki shouted back.

“It was pink and orange!”

Loki spun in his seat and grabbed Darcy’s wrist before she could smack him again.

“Stop hitting me or I will break your arm,” he growled menacingly.

“You can’t,” Darcy shot back, reminding him of the bracelet, which reminded her of something. “Thor!” she screeched.

“What?”

“He knew! He knew you were going to be punished, so the first thing he did was come give me the bracelet. That bastard! I’m going to strangle him! No, my hands are too small...” she muttered. “But I’m still going to kill him! How do I kill him?!”

Loki chuckled, rubbing the back of his head, and left Darcy to her pacing. “I do so enjoy it when you’re angry at other people.”

 

** *** **

 

“Take that, you pathetic wench!” Loki crowed as he seized victory.

“No!” Darcy screeched, throwing her controller down as Princess Daisy was rescued from the starry abyss beyond the Rainbow Road track. “You’re a fucking liar! You said you’d never played this before.”

“I hadn’t – I’m just that good,” Loki taunted, taking a victory lap around the couch.

A lazy Sunday had turned into all-out war after Darcy had introduced Loki to video games, specifically Mario Kart, which she had deemed simple enough to start him out on. After an excruciating amount of time spent perfecting Loki’s avatar, they started racing and Loki seemed like a natural. After he placed on the first track certain challenges were issued, each of them getting more competitive after each track until it came down to the last one. If Darcy had won she would have gotten the gold trophy, which Loki could not permit.

“You asshole! I demand a rematch!”

They had barely gotten through the first track when Darcy’s temper got the best of her and she inadvertently sent Loki crashing to the ground with a surge of electricity.

“Holy shit! I’m so sorry – ow!” Darcy cried, landing on her ass with a thud after Loki took her legs from out from under her. “Bastard!”

The ensuing commotion brought Clint running to the living area, weapon drawn. He perched atop the couch, ready to aim an arrow at Loki, only to find he was being inexpertly smothered by a cushion whilst laughing hysterically.

“He blue turtled shelled me,” Darcy explained lamely, blowing her hair out of her eyes, slightly abashed at being caught in such a strange position. “Three times.”

Clint thought about it for a moment before lowering his weapon and withdrawing. “Fair enough.”

 

** *** **

 

The lab was strangely quiet - there were no interns running around breaking things, no machines whirring and beeping, and no amusing and inappropriate commentary from Tony – which meant that the loud, wistful sighing of Doctor Jane Foster could easily be heard over Darcy’s typing.

“Oh my god, Jane! You have to stop,” Darcy snapped.

“Stop what?”

“All this sighing and checking your phone every five minutes. It’s driving me crazy.”

“I’m allowed to be worried.”

“Sure. But they said the mission would take at least a week, so you don’t get to be audibly worried until the week’s up. You don’t see me freaking out because Loki hasn’t texted me once, not even to check if I’ve skipped ahead in our new favourite tv show.”

“Well, Loki’s not your boyfriend,” Jane replied sharply. “He’s… he’s your...” Jane stammered, her face screwing up with distaste.

“Hey, careful what you say next. I only started hanging out with him because you needed your sexy times with Thor. And now that you mention it, I don’t recall getting a “Thank you for all the orgasms” gift basket. Notice how I said “gift basket” and not “fruit basket”,” Darcy added with an air of expectation.

“Yes, Darcy. Fine,” Jane laughed, throwing her hands in the air. “Thank you for keeping Loki occupied. Thor and I will forever be in your debt.”

“Oooh, debt? That’s even better than a gift basket.”

Jane sighed again whilst Darcy laughed, closing her notebook. “I’m sorry, Darcy. I’m not going to get any work done. I’m going to go and see if Maria knows how the mission’s going.”

“Oh, alright,” Darcy smiled, grabbing her stuff. “Come on,” she said, linking arms with her friends-slash-boss, escorting her out of the lab. “You really don’t need to worry,” she added sincerely. “For all Loki’s angry macho talk, he’s always going to have Thor’s back.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” Darcy promised. “Nobody gets to kill Thor but Loki.”

“Darcy!”

“I’m kidding!” she laughed. “Mostly…”

 

Later that night Darcy received a text from an old college boyfriend asking if she wanted to meet up while he was visiting New York. She went to reply in the negative but hesitated long enough for something Jane had said to start gnawing at her, and before Darcy knew it she was making plans to go on a date.

 

** *** **

 

Working with the Avengers would be tolerable if only Loki could just teleport back to the tower once the mission was done and not have to endure hours stuck in the metal flying contraption with them.

“That was some good work, Copperfield.”

“Is that a compliment, Stark?” Loki teased – he had long since stopped wondering about the sources for the irritating billionaires names for him. “It’s just with that lopsided smirk permanently in place it’s difficult to take your words seriously. And that absurd facial hair doesn’t help matters.”

Thor, sitting a few seats over from Loki, snickered. Loki had a few conflicting emotions about it but held on the more familiar one, annoyance, and ignored his would-be brother.

“Hey, my beard is an iconic look. Guys all over the world ask their barbers for “the Tony Stark”,” he replied defensively. “It’s a classic, timeless look, thank you very much.”

“Like the Rachel,” Clint piped up from the pilot’s seat.

“That was some real good work out there, Loki” Steve repeated before Tony could continue defending his beard. “Don’t let Tony’s smirk convince you otherwise.”

“Yeah,” Clint called over his shoulder. “I especially liked the way he created a giant puppet from the rubble and laughed manically while it beat up everyone in its path. That wasn’t terrifying at all.”

“He was just relieving some pent up tension, weren’t you little boy blue?” Tony smirked. “How long has it been since you got laid anyway?”

“Laid?” Loki replied, feigning ignorance, quirking an eyebrow.

“Tony is enquiring how long it has been since you bedded a maiden,” Thor translated with only the faintest hint of amusement. Loki resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“I’m thinking it’s been awhile,” Tony continued. “Evil scheming takes up an inordinate amount of time. And then you were dead. And then you were scheming again. And then you were in jail – and not in gen pop, so I’m told - so I’m going go out on a limb and guess you’re suffering from the longest dry spell ever.”

“I will live to be five thousand years old,” Loki drawled. “If one these missions, or boredom, doesn’t claim me first. So what you consider a dry spell, to me feels like nothing more than a slow week.”

“Which is only going to get longer, considering the limited number of females in your orbit are either taken or want to punch you.”

“There are a few flaws with your reasoning,” Loki replied.

“Only a few?”

“One, you think my options, and my appetites, are limited to human females. And secondly, that women being spoken for is a hindrance for me. How is Miss Potts, by the way?” Loki asked conversationally. “Still ravishing and unfulfilled, I hope,” he teased.

“Stand down, Tony,” Steve sighed, putting a hand on Tony’s shoulder as he tensed, almost prepared to go for Loki’s throat. “You know he’s just winding you up.”

“Quid pro quo,” Loki smirked.

“It’s fine,” Tony muttered, shrugging off Steve’s hand. “Queen Elsa here is just jealous because the only person who can stand him is his part-time parole office, who is quite literally forced to hang out with him.”

 _Do not speak of Darcy_ , Loki mentally growled, surprising himself. He spent the rest of the trip tuning out Tony and pondering the meaning behind his reaction, but it wasn’t until he saw her again that the reason became painfully obvious.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a bit long because I didn't think anyone would appreciate me splitting in half and delaying the smut any longer. :P

It had been a few days since his return to the tower and Loki had yet to find a moment alone with Darcy to not-discuss the possibility that his feelings for her were changing. His instinct for self-preservation would not permit him to make the first move unless he was certain that Darcy would not laugh in his face, and the way she couldn’t hold his gaze since his return, and hadn’t offered to take the bracelet from Thor, did not instil him with confidence.

Come Friday afternoon Thor advised him that he was to spend the evening in Darcy’s company, and Loki had thought it would be the perfect opportunity to circle around the issue and gauge Darcy’s reaction, and maybe order in some Thai. However…

“No!” Darcy whined as she saw Thor approaching, an offended-looking Loki trailing behind. “Not tonight. I have plans.”

“I’m sorry, Darcy, but I need to meet the rest of the team in the City of Angels this evening for a charity event. There’s no one else.”

“Why can’t Loki go with you? He’s an Avenger. Kind of.”

Loki snorted and rolled his eyes, which Thor cited as reason enough why Loki wasn’t going with him.

“Fine,” Darcy sighed, extending her arm to Thor, who took it gratefully.

“Thank you, Darcy,” Thor beamed, kissing her hand, waiting for the familiar tinging of magical transference before taking his leave.

“Whatever. Bring me back some Mexican,” she grumbled, sliding down the wall opposite Loki’s room. “Hurry up and get changed, would you. I wanna move this pity party to Tony’s bar.”

She pulled out her phone and began texting, missing the slight hint of hurt and confusion on Loki’s face. He returned a few minutes later, wearing grey sweats and a black t-shirt with the word “NO” printed on it, and decided to take a risk and voice his concerns.

“I was under the impression that you didn’t mind my company. What has changed?”

“I don’t mind your company, honest,” Darcy assured him, letting him help her up off the floor. “It’s just… I had a date tonight.”

“And what precisely is a date?” Loki asked as casually as he could as they helped themselves to a glass of expensive looking scotch. “I’m still not entirely clear on the concept.”

“You don’t date on Asgard?” Darcy asked, plopping down on the couch beside the more graceful Loki. “Then what do you call Jane and Thor’s relationship?”

“Courting?”

“Sounds kinda Victorian – lots of uptight protocols, long walks around the meadows with chaperones and shit. Am I close?”

“That does sound quite similar.”

“So, Jane and Thor are breaking heaps of rules shacking up together, huh? Scandalous.”

“Not quite. They have skipped several more traditional steps, obviously. But Thor has sworn an oath of loyalty to her – and Asgardians take their oaths very seriously.”

“And what about you, did you ever court any fair maidens back in the day? Something tells me you ignored protocol a lot.”

Loki chuckled darkly before redirecting the conversation. “But what of Midgardian customs – how does dating differ from courting?”

“It’s kind of the same, I guess. Less formal though. If you’re interested in someone, you ask them out on a date: a meeting at a specific time and place, for the express purpose of getting to know someone better, with romantic entanglement as a possible outcome. It can just be a meal, or a coffee. You can go to a movie together, or a concert, or to a club. Sometimes it’s a blind date – friends set you up with a complete stranger, who they promise you will love, but it always ends badly. And sometimes it’s because you need to link arms with someone at your sister’s wedding so that your grandmother won’t set you up with a third cousin in a desperate attempt to stop you from ending up an old spinster cat lady.” Loki smirked as she finally stopped to take a breath. “And after that, if you like them, you can organise to go another date, and another date, until you decide that you are officially “dating.” Which can lead to other things like moving in together or getting married, but it doesn’t have to be a forever thing, you know? And even if you do get married you can always get divorced,” Darcy rambled.

“Yes, you Midgardians are a fickle breed,” Loki mused, laughing as Darcy punched him in the arm. “Regardless, Darcy, I am sorry you had to abandon your date because of me.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s probably for the best.”

“How so?”

“It was with an ex.”

Loki’s brow creased in a way that Darcy found adorable on all the non-humans she was acquainted with, especially the one seated across from her.

“An ex-boyfriend. Someone I used to date. Court. Whatever. He’s in town for a few days and wanted to meet up. Which basically means we would’ve gone to a bar and drunk until my downstairs brain overrode my upstairs brain.”

Darcy giggled. There was that look again.

“Don’t go home with him, he’s a jerk. You cried for a whole week when he broke up with you - remember!” she said in a squeaky voice, with finger pointing to her brain. “Don’t listen to her!” she continued, in a slightly lower squeaky register, pointing to her lap. “He gave us lots of orgasms. We love orgasms!”

Loki almost snorted his scotch, coughing and spluttering as he doubled over laughing.

“My word, Darcy,” he chuckled, still trying to regain his composure. “You are utterly singular, aren’t you?”

“And practically perfect in every way,” she added in a sing-song voice, not bothering to explain the reference.

“Well, that settles it,” Loki exclaimed, setting down his drink and standing up. “We are going on a date.”

“What?”

“A date: a meeting at a specific time and place, for the express purpose of getting to know someone better. The time is now, and I will leave the rest of the details up to you. Shall we?” he asked, gesturing towards the door.

“What?” she repeated, leaping to her feet. “Are you serious?”

“Of course. You always enjoy acting as my cultural liaison, and I feel this is an area of Midgardian culture of which my knowledge is lacking. Do you not feel duty-bound to educate me?” he smirked.

“Well…” Darcy hesitated briefly, seemingly weighing the pros and cons. “We can’t go on a date dressed like this.”

Loki hid a sly smile at Darcy’s easy acceptance of his proposal as he inspected his t-shirt.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? You picked it out for me.”

“Yeah, but those aren’t date clothes. You don’t wear those clothes outside unless you’re really hungover and live outside your pizza place’s delivery radius.”

“Then what are date clothes?”

“Well… You want to look nice, you want to make the best first impression on your date - yes, you take your date on a date. English is weird, I’m sorry,” Darcy rambled, hands raised defensively. “But it also depends on the type of date you’re going on – romantic, outdoorsy, casual, formal...”

“And what type of date are we going on?” Loki teased.

“Well, how about something a little nicer than average, I’m not sure what we’re going to do yet... So, wear those new dark jeans, a nice shirt, and a jacket, okay? Meet back here in 20 minutes.”

** *** **

Usually it would have taken Darcy at least an hour to properly prepare for a date, but she didn’t want to tell Loki that. Her hair and makeup had already been done when Thor changed her plans, but the outfit she had laid out on her bed had to be scrapped. It was extra boobalicious to torment her ex, but it wouldn’t do to put herself on display for the God of Mischief. And she wasn’t going to wear anything green, she decided, flicking through the dresses hanging in her closet. That would send the wrong message. And nothing red, that would send an even worse message, at least in Loki’s mind. In the end she paired a goldenrod t-shirt dress ([X](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/18/3c/1a/183c1a71a7d1bcf5eb7f7feaf7fee271.jpg)) with a light cardigan and big girl heels – pretty enough for a date, but casual enough for a date with a friend she had never thought about sleeping with. _Keep fighting the good fight, upstairs brain!_

Darcy stepped out of her bedroom doing a once over of the contents in her handbag as she knocked on Loki’s door.

“Time’s up, Mischief.”

She stepped back as the door opened, her eyes unable to stop themselves from panning up and down the entirety of Loki’s body. He’d taken her advice and worn his black, just-tight-enough jeans, black boots, and a casual olive green shirt with all three of its buttons undone. If that wasn’t bad enough the bastard had finished it off with leather jacket that looked like it had been custom-made for him. He tied back his hair and fidgeted with his jacket.

“Will this suffice?”

“Yeah,” Darcy replied much too quickly. “You look… You scrub up nice, Mischief.”

“You’re blushing,” he smirked.

“Fine. You look hot. Now tell me I look beautiful. It’s a date rule.”

Loki’s smirk grew as he took Darcy’s hand in his, kissing her knuckles. “You look more resplendent than all the greatest treasures of the Nine Realms combined.”

“Beautiful would have done it,” she mumbled, pulling her hand away and walking away towards the elevator so she didn’t have to look directly at him. “And, another piece of advice, before you go on a real date with a Midgardian girl: giving her a bouquet of flowers when you pick her up is very cute. Or send them to her afterwards as a thank you. But I think chocolates are better.”

** *** **

“Close your eyes.”

“Why?” Loki asked.

“Because I want it to be a surprise.”

Loki glanced about at the crowded street, wondering what Darcy was playing at.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me?”

The smile Darcy gave Loki made the answer abundantly clear to him. He closed his eyes and tried not to react as Darcy took his hand, leading him around the corner.

“Okay, got a few steps here…” Darcy said, moving to his back, pushing him into a shop.

“Oh,” Loki smiled, taking in a deep breath. “I would know that smell anywhere.”

“Welcome to Strand Bookstore. 18 miles of new, used, and rare books,” Darcy announced as Loki opened his eyes. “When organising a date you want to try and cater to the other persons interests,” Darcy explained. “And I thought you might like to start your own library.”

“Darcy, this is… this is amazing.”

“Yeah, don’t praise me too much,” Darcy said bashfully, turning bright red. “I totally stole this idea from ‘Beauty and the Beast’. And don’t give me that confused look or so help me I will drag you back to the tower until you’ve watched the entire Disney Renaissance collection.”

“Where to start?” Loki chuckled, looking around the huge store.

“How about… World Politics?” Darcy said with a grin, leading him down the musty aisles.

_Three Hours Later…_

“… and so Thor stumbles home with nothing but his hammer to hide his shame, and a singed goat trailing behind him.”

“No!” Darcy squealed, laughing so hard that no sound came out. “Oh my god, that is the best story ever! I can’t wait to ask Thor about it,” she gasped, wiping away a tear.

“I would not speak of it, if I were you,” Loki warned, smirking. “Thor loathes the tale so much that the last time somebody mentioned it he struck them down with lightning. Fandral had smoke coming off his moustache for a week!”

“Oh my god, stop it! I’m going to pee!” Darcy begged, shrieking with laughter until she most definitely needed to pee. When she returned to the booth she glanced at her mostly empty pint glass.

“Alright, same again?” Darcy asked as Loki drained his glass.

“Yes, if you please.”

Darcy dug her wallet out of her bag and headed to the bar. She had been waiting for service for three whole seconds before one of the more inebriated patrons decided to strike up a conversation.

“Hey baby, you look lonely.”

“Ugh. I’m really not.”

“Come on, baby. Don’t be mean. Whaddya say I buy you a drink?”

“I can buy my own drinks. Thanks anyway.”

But the guy kept talking, and the bartender kept ignoring her, so Darcy decided to cut her losses. She turned back to the nearby booth to find Loki perched at the edge of his seat, his best death glare fixed on the interloper. She gave him a pleading look and a small shake of her head, begging him to stand down. The last thing she wanted was for Loki to throw the drunk across the room. Alright, fine, the last thing Darcy wanted was for Loki _to get in trouble_ for throwing the drunk across the room.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said, shoving her wallet back in her bag, trying to ignore the fact that the drunk was still following her.

“Where you going, sweet cheeks?” the drunk asked, pinching her ass.

Before Loki could react Darcy gave in to a kneejerk reaction - well, an elbowjerk reaction, really – and broke the asshole’s nose. You didn’t live in a building frequented by women like Natasha Romanoff and Maria Hill without picking up a few things. Darcy spun around the face her assailant, now sprawled on the floor, hollering about his bloodied nose, taser in hand.

“If you ever touch me again I will tase you in the balls until they explode, I swear to God!”

Darcy took a breath and stepped back, shoving her taser back in her bag. Loki, in awe of Darcy’s display, offered her a brilliant smile before turning on the drunk. His smiled twisted into something dark and unnerving as he lifted the man off the ground with ease, holding him up off the floor for longer than necessary before allowing his feet to touch solid ground again. He straightened the man’s jacket, dusting off imaginary dirt, before leaving him with some memorable parting words of his own.

“If you ever touch my girlfriend again… I will make you _wish_ she got to you first.”

With that he put his arm around Darcy’s shoulders and escorted her out of the bar and into a cab, neither of them saying a word until they were halfway back to Avengers Tower.

“Girlfriend?” Darcy asked quietly, unable to meet Loki’s eyes.

“Well, ‘babysitter’ lacked a certain gravitas, I thought,” Loki smirked.

** *** **

Darcy couldn’t stop blushing under the weight of Loki’s stare. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her the whole ride back. He had this strange smile playing on his lips that made her equal parts nervous and aroused. The elevator doors opened to their floor and Loki let Darcy step out first, his hand at the small of her back, but never quite touching her. Darcy stopped in the hallway between her room and his, turning to face her somewhat ardent admirer.

“Sooo… that was a date. Sort of. I don’t think most of them end in assault, but this is New York, so you never know…” she mumbled anxiously.

“And how are dates usually concluded on Midgard, if not with violence?” he smirked.

“Usually with a goodnight kiss,” Darcy replied automatically before she realised what she was saying. _Shit_. “Not that we need to…”

Loki saw an opening and took it, pulling Darcy flush against him and kissing her breathless.

“I find myself quite enjoying these Midgardian dating rituals of yours,” he whispered, his thumb tracing over her bottom lip.

“Yeah… they’re awesome…” Darcy replied dreamily. She blinked, cleared her throat and addressed the ceiling. “Friday, is there anyone else home tonight?”

“No, Ms Lewis.”

“Can you let me know the second that changes, and can you keep the security footage of what just happened, and what’s going to happen, just between us girls?”

“Of course, Ms Lewis.”

“And what’s going to happen, Ms Lewis?” Loki asked with a small smirk that said he knew exactly what.

Darcy grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and pulled him down to meet her lips again, all the while moving them towards her bedroom. Once inside Loki pressed her up against the door, slamming it shut. They helped each other shed their outer layers but when Darcy went to fall to her knees, her hands grasping at his belt buckle, Loki stopped her.

“I think we should slow down, just a little bit,” he murmured, his hands busy ridding Darcy of her dress, button by button.

“Been a while, has it?” she teased. “Then probably best we saved that for later. You wouldn’t have lasted a minute.”

“You think so?” Loki replied, picking her up off the ground.

“I’m very, very good,” Darcy smirked, locking her ankles behind him.

“Oh, I have no doubt,” Loki replied, nipping at her bottom lip as he rolled his hips against hers. They stayed that way for a few minutes, Loki grinding his belt buckle against the soft, wet point between Darcy’s thighs as he kissed her senseless. “Just to be sure - you’re sure?” Loki asked breathlessly.

“I’m pretty sure I’m sure,” Darcy laughed, ripping Loki’s shirt off, running her hands over his bare chest before pulling him in for another kiss.

“Then why, pray tell, were you going to go on a date with someone else?” Loki asked, pulling away slightly.

“I don’t know,” Darcy confessed. “We spend so much time together, I thought I was just confused. I wanted to put some space between us, see other people, to see if I still felt the same, see if it was real or just Stockholm syndrome, or whatever.”

“And you’re no longer confused? You want me?”

“Yes,” Darcy smiled. “Do you want me? And not just because your options are limited.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m the one of the few women in the tower who will even talk to you.”

“You’re the only woman in the tower who _wants_ to talk to me, and has no ulterior motives, and I like you all the more for it. Now, if we’re done with the talking portion of the evening…” he said, putting Darcy’s feet back on the ground. “I think I’ve been standing outside the Gates of Valhalla for long enough.”

Before Darcy could ask Loki what the hell he meant he was on his knees between her legs, ripping off her panties and dragging his tongue along her slit.

“Holy shit!” she cried, slapping her hand over her mouth.

“Don’t you dare,” Loki growled, pulling one of Darcy’s legs over his shoulder. “I want to hear every delicious sound that you make.”

Darcy begged and screamed as Loki pleasured her with his tongue and teased her with his fingers, her hands twisting in his hair.

“Mmm,” Loki purred after one rather harsh tug on his dark locks. “Aren’t you glad I didn’t get my hair cut?”

“Shut up. Don’t stop,” she pleaded, pulling him closer. Loki sucked on her clit and moaned, sending shivers through Darcy’s entire body, but just as she was about to come he pulled away and got to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing?!” Darcy screamed, trying not to let her legs give out under her.

“Take that off,” Loki ordered, gesturing at her bra, as he undid his jeans and letting them fall to the floor. Darcy, growling, hastily rid herself of the last of her clothing. She lunged at Loki but he just laughed and threw her down on the unmade bed.

“You better finished what you started.”

“Oh, I intend to, pet,” he swore, crawling over her. “Just getting you warmed up for the main event. I want you dripping wet and begging for me.”

“This is me begging,” Darcy hissed, pulling on his hair to bring him to her eye level. “Fuck me, Loki.”

Loki smiled ravenously, taking his cock in hand and lining it up with her entrance. He kept his eyes on Darcy’s mouth, the way her lips parted and the softest whimper escaped, as he entered her.

“Fuck… Darcy…” Loki groaned as her warmth enveloped it, threatening to swallow him whole.

“Yes,” Darcy nodded eagerly. “Fuck me, please.”

Loki thrust into her in slow, deliberate strokes, frustrating Darcy with his vain attempts to keep his composure.

“Loki…” Darcy whined, wrapping her legs under his ass, trying to pull him closer. Loki just chuckled at her impatience, pulling out all the way before sliding back in, inch by inch.

“Ohmygodyoufucker!” Darcy screamed, realising too late that her anger had set off the taser function of Loki’s bracelet. He groaned, the veins in his neck popping as his body convulsed violently, Darcy whimpering with pleasure beneath him. “Oh my god!” Darcy cried when the shock subsided and Loki fell against her chest gasping for breath. “I’m so sorry, Loki. I’m so sorry.”

“Do it again.”

“What?”

“Do. It. Again.” Loki growled, slamming into her with every word.

“Fuck!”

“Do it!” Loki snarled, grabbing the bedframe as he ground his hips against Darcy’s, watching as she tried to summon the exact emotions to trigger the bracelet’s defences. “Do it, Darcy!”

“Stop yelling at meee-ee-ee!”

Electricity surged through Loki and he thrust wildly against Darcy, barely registering her fingernails digging into his back. When the shock began to fade Loki growled and pistoned his hips with abandon, fucking Darcy into the mattress, desperately chasing his climax. Darcy screamed his name as she came hard, taking Loki with her seconds later.

“Darcy! FUCK!” Loki came with a roar and collapsed on top of her. Darcy, gasping for breath, tried to push him up. It took Loki a moment but he quickly found enough strength to lift himself off and fell back down beside her.

Darcy pressed her thighs together, whimpering over the loss of him from between them and from the beginnings of muscle aches that were certain to affect her gait in the morning.

“Well, that was new. Holy shit,” Darcy moaned when she had breath enough to speak.

“Did I hurt you?” Loki asked urgently, trying to sit up.

“Just the opposite,” she assured him with a dreamy smile.

“Fucking hell, Darcy…” Loki muttered, falling back down on the bed.

“You said a Midgardian swear,” Darcy giggled breathlessly.

“You’re insane,” he smiled back.

“Well, that’s the psychotic megalomaniac calling the kettle black. Sorry,” she added instantly, sensing the immediate mood change.

“You’re going to be thought less of for copulating with me.”

“Copulating? Ew,” Darcy joked, pulling a sheet up to cover herself.

“I’m serious, Darcy. If this comes to light you should tell them that I manipulated you.”

“What? Are you crazy? No, don’t answer that. I’m not crying rape, okay?”

“It would be better if they were angry with me, not disappointed with you. Your judgment would be forever in question.”

“They don’t have to know.”

“They’ll find out.”

“Not if we don’t talk about it, or do something stupid like make out in front of them. They may be Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but they’re not the most observant bunch, at least when it comes to me. They only remember I’m there when they need something. Like coffee. Or Jane’s goddamn notebook – I swear, one of these days I’m going to staple it to her freaking hand.”

“Shh…” Loki stroked her cheek, pushing a few errant hairs out of the way, and then curled himself around her like a creeping vine, kissing her softly. “I’ve always taken notice of you, from the very first day we were introduced.”

“You noticed my boobs,” Darcy countered.

“Well, they are exquisite,” Loki remarked, grinning suggestively. “But I did notice the rest of you, too. I noticed the time you started wearing your hair up, only to wear it down again once that one rather flammable experiment of Stark’s was scrapped. I remember when you tried to quit caffeine, and you didn’t want anyone to know you conceded after only half a day. And I know your expressions well enough to know the difference between when you’re thinking about me, when you’re trying very hard not to think about me, and when you’re trying desperately not to let it show that you watched the Vikings finale without me,” he growled out, nipping at her throat.

“Alright, I confess!” she cried dramatically. “I watched it without you. You went on mission with one episode to go. I couldn’t stop myself!”

“I forgive you,” he laughed before sobering quickly as gazed down at Darcy. Her skin was flushed, her tangled hair fanned out over the pillow, and her lips, always so plump and kissable, were left with only the faintest trace of the lipstick that was so meticulously applied at the beginning of the night. Loki had never seen anything more beautiful. “Darcy…”

“Yes?”

“There are a many reasons why it would be advisable for us to forget this night ever happened, namely the fact that I am hated by almost everyone in this building, if not this realm, but… I do not wish to forget. Circumstances being different I would very much like to court you properly - publicly, but reality being what it is, if we continue this it must remain between us. May I know how you feel about such a relationship?”

“So, first you’re concerned about how hooking up with you will affect my reputation, and now you want to do it on the regular?”

“Well… I can only be self-sacrificing in small increments. My own selfish desires will always win out in the end,” he laughed, happy that Darcy laughed too.

“I don’t hate you,” she said after a moment’s contemplation.

Loki scoffed. “As far as declarations go, it could be worse, I suppose. I can’t imagine _how_ , but...”

Darcy silenced him with a kiss.

“I really, _really_ don’t hate you. And I’d really, _really_ like to do this again sometime.”

“Then we shall,” he declared with smile, shifting over her, settling between her thighs as he kissed her again.

“Ms Lewis,” came the Irish-accented voice of Friday. “The Avengers are 10 miles out. I thought you would like to know.”

Loki groaned and buried his face in the crook of Darcy’s neck. Darcy laughed and kissed his forehead.

“You knew this wasn’t going to be easy, like, five seconds ago.”

“Yes, but five seconds ago I thought we would at least have the night together without any interruptions.”

“Apparently not,” she said pushing him away. “Ha! I can’t believe I get to kick a god out of my bed.”

“You find this amusing?” he asked, reaching down for his jeans, turning just in time to see Darcy checking out his ass.

“It’s hilarious,” Darcy remarked, pulling a bedsheet around her as she threw his clothes and boots at him. “You’re screwing the babysitter and now the parents are coming home. It’s like a bad porno. Except the porn part was really good. Oh, shut up,” she said, shoving Loki towards the door as he grinned at her.

“Had I the time I would have ravaged you again. And again.”

“Promises, promises,” Darcy smiled at the shirtless god, pausing in the doorway, sheet clutched to her chest in one hand, door held in the other. “Goodnight, Loki.”

“Goodnight, Darcy,” he replied, leaning in for one last kiss. He pulled away suddenly, taking Darcy’s sheet with him as he bolted for his own room.

“Loki!” Darcy squealed, attempting to cover herself before slamming her door shut. “Bastard!”

Moments later the quinjet’s engines could be heard over Loki’s laughter.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I feel that even for a filler chapter this is a bit blah, but I'm bogging myself down trying to make it better when I've got the second half of the fic finished - it's been done and dusted for months - waiting to be posted. So let's just try and get there sooner rather than later, shall we?
> 
> I'm sure "f*** it" is not an acceptable motto to have when editing your work, and I fear the middle might let the rest of it down, but I just need to get this finished and out of my head. Don't hate me :P

“Ms Lewis? Ms Lewis?”

“Stop. Calling. Me. That.”

“Daaaarcy…” Loki crooned, earning a smirk from the still half asleep Darcy.

“Whaaaaat?”

“I wish to make myself some breakfast. Will you be rising any time soon?”

“Nope.” All Darcy heard was a muffled chuckle before she felt Loki’s arms curled under her. “What are you – ah!” Darcy shrieked as Loki lifted her out of bed and carried her bridal-style (well, unconscious damsel style, really) to the open plan living area, dumping her on the couch. Again. “I hate you,” she grumbled.

“No, you don’t. You really, really don’t,” he teased.

“Shut up and bring me coffee,” she called over the sofa.

She had almost fallen back to sleep when Loki sat down heavily on her feet, earning him a kick to the hip as she freed herself and tried to get comfortable on the couch. Loki set down his breakfast tray – a plate piled high with buttered toast, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, plus a large bowl of fruit salad and a glass of juice – and handed Darcy her coffee.

“Thank you, but I don’t think this quite makes up for waking me up again. I think you need to be punished.”

“If it’s anything like last night’s punishment then I agree completely,” he grinned in between mouthfuls.

“Shut up,” Darcy replied quietly, sipping her coffee and glancing around the room.

Loki gave her an offended look as if to say, ‘Do you really think I’d be that careless?’

“And what is the appropriate punishment for waking you before midday, anyway?” he said instead.

“Friday, queue up all the Disney Princess movies, starting from Snow White and working your way to the most recent. But can you add Alice, and Kida, and Lilo. And Toy Story. And Tarzan.”

“I’d be delighted, Ms Lewis.”

Loki watched in silence as he finished his breakfast, wincing at Snow White’s high pitched singing, before starting a running commentary.

“Oh, please, if he hadn’t the nerve to kill a simpering girl, why is he in that line of work at all?”

“Do Midgardians truly think that precious gems come out of the ground pre-cut? Preposterous.”

“Oh, yes, kiss the unconscious woman in the glass coffin in the middle of the forest. That’s not a highly questionable act at all.”

“Well, I can at least sympathise with this Cinderella character; always being unfairly overlooked in favour of her repugnant, untalented, and unintelligent stepsisters.”

“A pumpkin? Really?”

“Is the prince simple? What is with the shoe? Does he have a brain injury that prevents him from recalling what Cinderella looks like?”

“Do the flowers Alice was weaving have hallucinogenic properties? Because that is the only thing that would explain this insanity.”

“Why are you laughing? If I’m the Queen of Hearts, then you’re the tiny king, always batting your eyelashes at me to get me to behave. No, I was merely jesting - stop batting your eyelashes at me, Darcy.”

It wasn’t until the gilded and jewel covered book with the words “Sleeping Beauty” upon it appeared on screen that he fell quiet, his brow crinkled in concentration.

“What is it?” Darcy asked.

“There’s something about this…” he muttered. “It seems familiar somehow.”

“Oh, that might be because I put the music on your iPod.”

“You put the music from a children’s film on my iPod? Whatever for?”

“No, the music isn’t specific to the film,” Darcy explained. “Sleeping Beauty is an old as balls folk tale, which has been retold over and over again over the years. And the fairy tale inspired a ballet - like an opera but with dancing instead of singing – composed by this Russian dude called Tchaikovsky. Seventy years later the guys at Disney adapted the Tchaikovsky’s music for the film score. I put a few key pieces from the ballet on your iPod.”

“That… was a very knowledgeable answer, Darcy.”

“Well, Sleeping Beauty’s my favourite,” Darcy sighed wistfully, her eyes fixed on the screen whilst Loki’s were on her. “My mom took me to see it when I was a kid and I just loved it. Ooh! Shut up and watch this; Maleficient’s an awesome villain!” she exclaimed, pointing to the screen.

“What must others think knowing you hold favour for villains,” Loki teased.

“Shut up.”

They watched the rest of the movie in silence, except for the few moments when Darcy was humming along with the songs, and when the credits rolled she sat up and asked him what he thought.

“I think I can understand why you enjoy it so.”

“Thank you for not mocking it like you did the others.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he laughed, falling silent when he heard the elevator doors open.

Clint and Natasha walked in, dressed in their workout gear, glancing between the pair on the couch and the screen showing the beginnings of The Little Mermaid with mild disinterest.

“Nevermind us,” Clint said, heading for the kitchen. “Nat and I are just grabbing some lunch and then we’ll be out of here.”

“Darcy, can you turn that off?”

“What?” Darcy asked, turning to Natasha.

“Would you mind turning that off while we’re up here, please?”

There was something about the way she said it that made Darcy want to comply, even though it wasn’t Natasha’s usual ‘do it or you’ll regret it’ voice.

“Friday, can you pause this and switch to the next thing in my Netflix queue please?”

“Of course, Ms Lewis.”

They watched an episode of House of Cards until Clint and Natasha left the floor and then continued with their Disney marathon for the rest of the day.

Loki smiled at Darcy when the library scene from Beauty and the Beast appeared on screen, and Darcy swore she heard him, even though he denied it, humming the songs throughout the week.

** *** **

It surprised Darcy just how little her relationship with Loki had changed - though she had to admit she did enjoy the parts that had. A lot. It was kind of a friends with benefits deal, but heavy on the friendship. They hung out whenever Thor needed a break from Loki, and Loki being Loki meant that they got to hang out most weekends. Sometimes they’d make out or hook up – privacy and time permitting. It was casual and fun, and Darcy did her best to keep it that way.

On a rare weekend when the other residents were either on a mission, or just off site, Loki spent the night in Darcy’s bed, giving her as many orgasms as she could handle. One such weekend Darcy woke up before Loki, which had never happened in all the Sundays she had known him, and spent a few minutes watching him sleep. He looked so peaceful, his expression free of all the anger and irritation it usually showed. Darcy would have loved to have let him stay that way, but a girl had to eat. Or at least get coffee.

“Loki. Hey, Loki,” she called, poking him in the ribs.

“What,” he grumbled, his brow creasing changing his expression back to its default irritated expression.

“Wake up.”

“No.”

“Come on, I’m hungry.”

“Starve.”

Darcy huffed. “You always make me wake up when you want to go to the kitchen. Or you dump me on the couch.”

“Well, Ms Lewis, you can’t make me wake up, so I suggest start working on your upper body strength.”

“Can’t make you, huh?”

“Nope.”

“What if I showed you my boobs?”

Loki’s eyes shot open and Darcy celebrated her victory, laughing as she jumped on him on her way out of bed.

“Ha! You’re awake!” she crowed. “Let’s go. I’ll show you how to make chocolate chip pancakes.”

“You do not play fair,” Loki grumbled as he attempted to get dressed whilst still half-asleep.

“You _never_ play fair,” Darcy shot back as she headed for the kitchen.

“That is beside the point!”

** *** **

Darcy sat cross-legged on her bed whilst Loki sat at the other end with one of his ridiculously long legs hanging over the edge, a selection of playing cards laid out between them. Sounds of Thor enjoying a football game in the living area filtered in through the open door, something they did on purpose to remind them they weren’t alone.

“Loki, we’ve been at this for an hour,” Darcy whined, throwing down her cards in frustration.

“What? What have I done?”

“You’re smiling.”

“No, I’m not,” he replied indignantly, doing his best to appear dour.

“Yes, you are! You’re the God of Lies and you have the worst poker face I have ever seen. How is that possible?”

“I am simply enjoying our little game.”

“Uhuh, sure. Show me your hand. Show me your hand,” she demanded.

Loki placed his cards down face up, his smile returning.

“See, you’ve got a decent hand and you just have to gloat,” Darcy sighed. “You’re a gloater, you can’t help yourself. This is why you lost on Invasion Day,” she added irritably as she collected the cards up and began shuffling - again.

“Oh really,” Loki replied coolly, keeping his eyes on Darcy’s hands. “That was the fatal flaw in my otherwise perfect plan: I gloated too much?”

“Well, that, and the giant slab of concrete with the Loki-sized dent in it that Tony keeps in one of the basement storage units.”

Loki glared at her and Darcy felt the temperature drop ten degrees.

“He kept it?” he seethed.

“Um, yes?”

Loki took a second to calm down, centering himself, and Darcy breathed a small sigh of relief when the temperature returned to normal.

“Let’s go again,” Loki requested firmly, tapping the on the quilt-slash-table between them.

Darcy went over the rules with Loki again and again until he was sure he knew them backwards. And by the time Darcy called it quits on their lesson she was almost satisfied with his poker face, but she wondered how he’d do against the Avengers, knowing he was counting the days until he got his chance.

** *** **

“I fail to see the point of it,” Loki argued, as he and Darcy returned to the tower after one of their culinary excursions.

“It’s an American institution!”

“It is a waste of time. What entertainment is there in being surrounded by drunken Midgardians whilst watching brawnier Midgardians butt heads like oxen? I may as well never had left Asgard,” he grumbled. “If you truly wish to engage my attention, why not suggest a game of a more intellectual standing, like chess.”

“You won’t go to a football game, but you want to watch two brainiac’s play chess? Hell. No.”

“Trouble in paradise, kids?” Tony teased over his scotch glass.

“Loki’s just insulting all the great American pastimes: basketball, baseball, football…”

“But he likes chess, go figure.”

In truth, Loki simply did not wish for Darcy to take up a male acquaintances offer of free tickets to see a team called the Knicks play, for he sure there was nothing free about them.

“I’m right here, Stark. Why must you speak as though I’m not?”

“It’s Tony,” Bruce reminded him as he opened up a case of poker chips. “There’s rarely anybody else in the room as far as he’s concerned.”

“Who’s said that?” Tony asked the air around him.

“Tony’s creeping dementia getting worse?” Steve joked, arriving from the bar with his wingman, Sam, tow.

“That’s big talk for a man staring down his centenary.”

“Poker night?” Loki queried, as innocently as he could manage, over the Avengers delightful banter. “Mind if we join you?”

The table fell silent before Tony, after getting a non-verbal “yeah, ok” from everyone else, nodded.

“Not at all, Vanilla Ice. A hundred dollar buy in, winner takes all,” Tony advised.

Loki didn’t even grimace at the newest nickname Tony added to his already extensive collection, pulling a few folded notes from his pocket.

“A place for myself and one for Ms Lewis.”

“Does he pay for all your dates, Ms Lewis?” Tony teased.

“Technically, you’re paying for them,” Darcy replied with smile.

“Wait, so…” Tony stared at the pot curiously.

“Yep,” Bruce confirmed. “You’re playing us for your own money.”

“Huh…”

“You trying to catch flies, Sam?” Steve asked the man to his right.

“Uh, sorry,” Sam replied nervously, turning his attention to his chips. “It’s not every day you meet Loki of Asgard and live to tell about it.”

“The night’s still young,” Loki smirked.

“Loki,” Darcy scolded.

“This is Darcy Lewis,” Steve laughed. “Loki’s, uh, ‘parole office’. Darcy, you know Sam, I take.”

“I’ve seen him around.”

“Nice to finally meet you properly, Darcy,” Sam said, flashing Darcy a brilliant smile as he shook her hand.

“She’s too young for you,” Steve added.

“How old do you think I am?” they both shot back.

Everyone’s attention was diverted by the arrival of Natasha, wearing something that looked suspiciously like wedding dress that had met a weed whacker in a dark alley.

“Poker night already, boys? And Darcy.”

“You’re just in time,” Bruce said, offering to count out some chips for her. Natasha just shook her head went to the bar for a beer. She never played – it wasn’t fair to everyone else.

“How was Rome, Agent Romanoff? Say hi to the Pope like I asked you to?”

“Rome was wet. And the Pope said to lose his number,” Natasha replied with her usual bored air as she took her seat.

“You sure you don’t wanna get cleaned up first?” Sam ventured, gesturing at specks of red on the shoulder of her dress. “You’ve gotta little something…”

“Oh, it’s not mine,” Natasha waved dismissively.

** *** **

The game progressed slowly, with Loki making a show of how new he was to the game, pondering his moves for far too long, and asking Darcy for help. It was all Darcy could do to keep her own face neutral as he played the others like a fiddle.

“You’re looking kind of low on chips there, Stark. Are you sure you don’t simply call it a night?”

“Not going to happen. I don’t lose.”

“What about last month?” Natasha asked, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards.

“Clint cheated,” Tony replied automatically. “And I wiped the floor with him at the next game, and would have done so again tonight if he wasn’t “on the farm”. Whatever that’s spy code for, so…” Tony trailed off as he glanced down at his phone, Pepper’s unamused face staring right at that small, guilty part of his soul, but it was another two hands before he caved.

“Alright… Last round, ladies and gents. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Some of us have home lives that won’t stop calling us. I’m all in.”

Sam and Steve chucked in their cards in a huff, Natasha excused herself to go take a shower, already knowing who was going to win, and Loki gave Tony a smug look before he pushed all of his chips in.

“What the hell, it’s Tony’s money anyway,” Darcy muttered, pushing her chips in too.

Bruce, who had long since called it quits to sit back and play dealer, laughed. “Alright, show us your cards.”

“Alright, read ‘em and weep. Full house, Jacks over sixes,” Tony announced with a flourish.

“Oh, Stark,” Loki hummed, breaking out into vicious smile. “They may as well be Jokers, because they don’t – beat – kings,” he added, laying three of them on the table, alongside a pair of tens.

“How did you… What just happened?” Tony stammered as everyone laughed.

Darcy sighed and chucked her cards face down on the table before collecting them as Loki, grinning like a Cheshire cat, collected his winnings.

“No, no, no,” Tony muttered, ignoring yet another call from Pepper. “This is not happening. You cheated!”

“And how did I do that?”

“Trickster!” he blurted, pointing his finger at Loki as walked backwards towards the elevators.

“True!” Loki shouted back, “But all I had at my disposal is the knowledge of this game that Darcy imparted on me. She’s a fine tutor.”

“You!” Tony shouted at Darcy, with more finger pointing as the laughter continued. “Brutus! Iago! Smurfette!”

Without Tony the laughter soon died down and the table got cleared and eventually the only people left were Loki and Darcy, who slowly made their way back to their rooms, a respectable distance between them.

“Here,” Loki said, handing over half of his winnings as they paused outside their doors.

“What? Why are you giving me this?”

“You never did show your cards,” he remarked, giving her a pointed look.

“Fine,” Darcy sighed, taking the cash out of Loki’s hand as her poker face evaporated. “I just really wanted you to beat Tony, okay? Don’t hate me,” she cringed.

“I don’t hate you. I really, really don’t,” he added with a wink before ducking into his room before temptation got the better of him. “Goodnight, Ms Lewis.”

Darcy shook her head with a laugh, giving up the fight as she flicked a thumb over the crinkled bills in her hands. “Goodnight, Loki.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ** In case you’re wondering, Natasha asked for The Little Mermaid to be turned off because she doesn’t like Disney films, because… In an episode of Agent Carter they showed a flashback of little girls training in the Red Room. In one shot they’re in a classroom watching Snow White and repeating the lines back, I’m assuming to learn English / perfect accents *shrugs* So I figured if the Red Room kept that up then Natasha would have been trained with Disney movies up to and including The Little Mermaid. **


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a short little chapter about Christmas at Avengers Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy midsummer / midwinter celebration of your choosing. xoxox

Loki woke to the sound of his Stark Industries cell phone ringing, which was an odd and confusing way to be woken up considering it had never rung before. He dragged himself out of bed and wandered around his bedroom trying to locate the source of the sound, eventually finding the device tucked away in a drawer, where he had thrown it shortly after receiving it.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mischief,” came a most welcome voice.

“Darcy? How did you know I had a phone?”

“Everyone has a phone, doofus. I got your number from Friday because I wanted to wish you Merry Christmas!” she added cheerfully.

“Season’s Greetings to you as well.”

“Season’s Greetings?” Darcy mocked. “How many Christmas movies have you watched since I left?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t,” she giggled. “So how goes Christmas with Family Stark?”

“Fine,” Loki sighed.

Jane had invited Thor to spend Christmas with her parents, and Darcy had expressed the desire to spend the holidays with her mother’s family, so Loki had swallowed his pride and made other arrangements so she wouldn’t feel obligated to stay behind with him.

“The good doctor is a tolerable warden, it is just a pity he spends so much of his time in a lab with Stark.”

“But you have been on your best behaviour, right?” Darcy enquired.

“When am I not?”

“Do you want the answers chronologically or in order of most chaos wrought?”

“Is this why you called me? Worried I was causing trouble?”

“No,” Darcy swore. “It’s Christmas morning, and I’ve been awake since my little cousin jumped on my stomach at 4am, and I wanted to give you your present.”

“Present?”

“Mhmm, check under your bed.”

Loki did as requested, finding a green box tied with a gold ribbon tucked out of sight.

“What is it?”

“Why don’t you open it and see?”

Ever so carefully he unwrapped his present; a Tupperware container full of Rice Krispies Treats, around which curled a dark green scarf.

“Did you make this?” Loki asked, trying to keep his voice void of emotion as he gingerly lifted it out of the box.

“As much as I would like to take the credit for it, I have to confess that I actually didn’t make either of them. Crafts and cooking are just not things I generally excel at. My grandmother made them.”

“You asked your grandmother to knit me a scarf?” Loki asked, even more surprised.

“Ah, no. I mentioned you vaguely and she just took it from there. She has selective deafness: I said “guy from work,” she heard “boyfriend,” so… Do you like it?”

“I… I’m afraid I did not think to get you anything.”

“I didn’t give you something to get something – it’s not an orgasm.”

Loki snorted at her crass statement. “I thought reciprocity was expected in this most expensive of seasons.”

“Yeeeesss,” Darcy whined. “Commercialism has done its best to kill the spirit of Christmas, but to me it will always be the season of giving. And I wanted to give you a present, so just say thank you.”

“It’s lovely, Darcy. Thank you. And please extend my gratitude to your grandmother as well.”

“There you go, your princeliness. I knew those royal etiquette lessons were buried under that grumpy façade somewhere.”

“Thank you, Darcy,” he repeated, more sincerely.

“You’re welcome, Loki. Merry Christmas.”

After the call was concluded Loki spent the next hour alone in his room quietly vexed; something about the way Darcy had said ‘boyfriend’ so dismissively was bothering him. But it wouldn’t be until she returned to the tower, her smile warming up the miserable December day, that Loki figured out what exactly what it was.

** *** **

Christmas morning passed quietly enough for Loki. Dr Banner nervously, awkwardly, asked Loki to follow him to the lab so he could continue with some work until Pepper and her small army of personal chefs announced dinner. Tony was doing some charity toy drive thing, in front of lots of cameras, so it was the perfect time to get stuck into some of the less thrilling aspects of their work without loud music and other distractions.

Loki found a seat, out of Dr Banner’s way, and put his feet up on the desk, content to while away the morning reading. He paid little attention to the nervous scientist, but the opposite could not be said.

“Whatcha reading?” Bruce asked after half an hour of utter silence.

“’A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens. Darcy recommended it since it ‘tis the season’,” he shrugged. “Though I’m beginning to think she was trying to make a point of some kind.”

“Possibly,” Bruce smirked. “But it’s still a good read.”

“What would you recommend?”

“Huh?”

“What books would you recommend I read?” Loki repeated, ignoring Doctor Banner’s stunned expression. “Darcy has recommend a various books from her field of study, as well as traditional literature, but I would be interested in hearing your suggestions for reading material more scientific in nature.”

“Oh, uh…” Bruce stopped what he was doing and gave the question some thought. “’Physics’ by Aristotle, ‘A Brief History of Time’ by Stephen Hawking, ‘Undeniable’ by Bill Nye… As for fiction, the Sherlock Holmes books,” he added enthusiastically.

“Thank you, Doctor Banner.”

“You’re welcome, Loki.”

** *** **

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” cried Tony, stepping out of the elevator with a red sack slung over his shoulder. He was looking decidedly unchristmasy in his usual jeans and classic classic rock tee, but Loki and Bruce were no better, seated at the table in dark pants and sweaters in muted colour schemes. Only Pepper had made any real effort, flitting about the table in a red dress and gold heels, making sure everything was perfect.

“Alright, first things first: the obligatory wardrobe additions. For my little helper,” Tony announced, reaching into the sack and giving Bruce a cheery green Christmas hat with plastic elf ears.

“Gee, thanks, Tony,” he muttered putting it on.

“For my angel,” he said, handing Pepper a tinsel halo.

“Aww, thank you.”

“I’ll trade you,” Bruce whispered to Pepper, as Tony made his way around the table to Loki.

“And for you, Reindeer Games…”

Loki’s eyes went wide as Tony pulled out of the sack a pair of large felt antlers affixed to a headband. The damn thing even had bells on it.

“I am not wearing that.”

“Hey, if I’m wearing these,” Bruce said, pointing to his pointy ears, “you’re wearing that.”

“Can’t you just shock me until I pass out?”

“Nope.”

“Come on, Loki. It’s all in good fun,” Pepper said, affixing her halo to her hair.

“It’s all at my expense, I think you mean.” Loki sighed. He weighed the ridiculous headpiece in his hands, mulling over the potential humiliation whilst Tony took his seat and put on his own Christmas themed headgear – a hat in the form of a Christmas tree, complete with flashing lights.

 _If Darcy was here, she would have insisted I wear them…_ and with that thought Loki put the headband on. It started off as just snickering at first, but quickly grew loud giggling despite everyone’s attempts to remain serious. Then came the soft tinkling of bells as Loki shook with silent laughter, giving in to the ridiculousness.

“I hate you all.” Well… almost.

The laughter subsided, thought it would start all over again whenever a new guest arrived throughout the evening, and dinner was served. Tony announced that he was going to carve the Christmas ham – with a laser – much to Pepper’s disapproval.

“Before I forget,” Loki said, placing the tupperware container on the table. “I don’t have any gifts, but in the spirit of giving I shall share what I have.”

“What… what are those?” Bruce asked curiously, eyeing the confection with interest.

“I believe they’re called ‘Rice Krispies Treats’.”

“Did you make those?” Pepper asked.

“No, Darcy’s grandmother did.”

There was a blur of movement from the other men at the table as both of them dove for the container, wrenching a few squares free before slumping back down in their seats.

“What on earth are you doing?” Pepper queried, surprise barely registering – living with Tony having taken its toll a long time ago.

“Oh,” they both moaned, taking a bite of their squares.

“Darcy’s grandmother is fricking Betty Crocker,” Tony explained with a mouth full of rice krispies.

“You should have been here for the birthday snickerdoodle delivery.”

Both men moaned again at the memory.

“If only I was forty years older,” Tony muttered, smirking as Pepper gave him her trademark exasperated look.

“If only I was forty years younger,” Bruce smirked. “Can you imagine Christmas at her house?”

“Don’t get me started,” Tony replied. “Not that this spread doesn’t look amazing, Pep.”

“Thank you, Tony,” she replied mockingly, helping herself to the side dishes in front of her whilst Tony and Bruce helped themselves to more Rice Krispies Treats. Loki took one before they quickly vanished, moaning as the sweet gooey confection melted on his tongue.

“Sweet Valhalla…”

“See,” Tony remarked. “Bet that don’t do sweets like that in Asgard.”

“No, they do not,” he replied taking another bite.

“Merry Christmas?” Bruce smiled, raising his marshmallowy square in a toast.

“Merry Christmas,” everyone agreed.

** *** **

Later that evening Darcy received a picture message on her phone, her eyes going wide at the sight of Loki doing his best to appear intimidating and brooding whilst wearing reindeer antlers.

“Best Christmas present ever,” she declared, once she stopped laughing.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A belated Happy New Year to everyone xoxox

New Year’s Eve at Avengers Tower meant Tony’s annual over-the-top New Year’s Eve party. It also meant Darcy got to take Loki shopping again, this time for a proper suit. And shopping was a whole lot more fun now that Loki let her into the change rooms to ‘assist’ him.

Come the night of the party Thor was wearing the bracelet, but thanks to a few carefully chosen words from Darcy, and her making sure Jane looked as hot as possible, Thor handed over the responsibility to Darcy so that he could spend the evening in the company of his ladylove. The second it was convenient to do so, Darcy and Loki wandered down to an empty lab, quickly taking advantage of their limited alone time against a piece of equipment that would definitely require some recalibration come Monday.

Darcy groaned inwardly when they returned to the party, reappearing at the fringes like they had never left. Loki looked perfectly put together in his black three piece suit and green button up shirt, so dark it may as well been black, whereas Darcy was sure [her dress](http://wwwimage.cbsstatic.com/base/files/styles/596xh/public/42-56256437.jpg) was wrinkled and that her hair looked obviously sexed up.

“Stop fretting,” Loki scolded quietly, passing her a glass of champagne to keep her nervous hands occupied. “You look perfect.”

“Hardly.”

“Should I take you back down stairs and prove my words to you?”

Darcy blushed and downed the glass of bubbles, hoping to write off the red in her cheeks as the effects of the alcohol. They attempted to mingle with the party guests, or at least make it look like they were mingling when they were really making their way across the room to the buffet table.

“Mmph, Pepper sure knows how to put on a spread,” Darcy remarked as she sampled the baked brie, but there was no response from Loki, and no hands reaching for food. She turned and saw him stiffen, clenching his jaw as several party guests glared at him and shuffled away from the table, speaking in hushed tones.

“Come on, let’s get some air,” Darcy said, placing her hand at his back. They made their way towards the balcony, Darcy collecting her coat along the way, wrapping it around herself as she watched Loki lean against the balcony, staring out at the wintery cityscape. “You know,” she said, sidling up to him as close as she dared to in public. “If you squint the lights kinda look like stars. I mean, I’m sure it’s nothing like the view from Asgard, but… it’s pretty awesome.”

Loki snorted and gave her a withering look. “This light pollution is nothing like the skies above Asgard, and it is blasphemous for you to even equate the two.”

“Well, sorrrry,” Darcy shot back, blowing him a raspberry.

“It’s alright. I’ve discovered at least one view on this realm that rivals their beauty,” he replied pointedly, looking her up and down.

“Oh! Oh, that’s smooth!” Darcy applauded, pulling her coat closer to hide said marvellous the view.

Loki chuckled, and turned back to the city lights.

“You know,” she started awkwardly. “If you ever want to talk about… anything…”

“Let me guess – Darcy Time?”

Darcy smirked and nodded. “Absolutely.”

Loki smiled but quickly returned to his solemn, contemplative self, tapping his fingers along the balcony railing.

“I mean it,” she repeated quietly. “You never talk about it, and I’m sure the SHIELD appointed shrink tells you that’s not healthy. How many have you gone through now?”

“Seven. And I would speak to a ‘shrink’ before I burden you with all the horrible things I’ve done, Darcy.”

“I know the highlights,” she reminded him. “I knew them before I even met you, and look where we are now.”

Loki turned to her, her large blue eyes so calm and soothing, so unlike the chaos he saw in the mirror. And so he told her. Everything. Without embellishment, without ego. There was little emotion to it, until it came time to mention his mother, for it seemed to Loki that everything preceding it had happened to someone else, so long ago. And when he was done talking Loki took the biggest leap of faith of his long life and looked back at Darcy, and to his great relief found her eyes unchanged.

“I think about it often,” he admitted, turning back to the cityscape. “I replay the last decade of my life over and over, and I keep coming back to that one moment that changed everything. I try to imagine alternate outcomes from that point, but I can’t get past how angry and betrayed I felt. I can’t imagine a way things could have been different.”

“My father isn’t my biological father,” Darcy confessed, needing to fill the impending silence. “Apparently my bio dad skipped out when my mom was pregnant, and then along came this knight in a shining 80’s power suit to help her pick up the pieces. But fifteen years later they decided to tell me the truth on the same day they announced that they were getting divorced, which was A+ parenting on their part and didn’t shatter me at all,” she added bitterly. “He didn’t even fight for custody of me. Because I was older and, you know, not his. It was years before I was on civil speaking terms with either of them.”

“And how many people did you kill in the meantime?” Loki teased, albeit gingerly.

“None,” Darcy conceded. “I just slept with any guy that showed me attention for about a year.” Darcy paused and winced, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not the same. In fact it’s an awful comparison,” she admitted bashfully. “It’s not like I was raised a Capulet only to find out I was really a Montague. I’m sorry. God, forget I said anything,” she muttered, running a hand through her chaotic waves.

Darcy offered him a weak smile and was relieved to see him return it. Then he placed his hand over hers, a strangely intimate gesture despite the fact that not even half an hour earlier they had been clutching at each other, praising various deities.

“I’m sorry their lies caused you to lose yourself, Darcy.”

 _He was comforting her?_ Darcy shook her head with disbelief. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. It was wrong, and perfect, and Darcy thought she might cry.

“Ditto,” she replied instead, squeezing his hand.

They stayed that way for a few moments until the silence dragged on and threatened to become awkward.

“That reference you made, Capulets and Montagues? That is from a story of ill-fated lovers is it not?”

“Yeah, Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. Why do you ask?”

“I see some similarities between our stories: Capulets and Montagues, Asgardians and Midgardians, heroes and villains… Forces that would keep us apart if they knew of our involvement....”

“We are not Romeo and Juliet, okay?” Darcy snorted. “We are not ill-fated, just horny. They were horny too, but let’s not go ‘in depth analysis’ on this…”

“Darcy!” a voice boomed over the noise of the party.

“Ahh! Jeezus, Thor!” Darcy exclaimed, hand over her pounding heart as she attempted to subtly put a little distance between her and Loki. “You’ve _got_ to stop doing that!”

“I am sorry if I startled you, Darcy,” Thor chuckled, handing Loki a drink. “Jane is deep in conversation with a particle physicist she admires, and I believe she will be for some time, so I have come to free you from my brother’s clutches. You may go and enjoy the party.”

“Oh, sure,” she replied, acting unfazed as she took Thor’s hand in her own. “Behave, you,” she said pointing a finger at the smirking God of Mischief. “I mean it.”

Loki replied with a middle finger, laughing as Darcy feigned shock before disappearing into the crowd inside.

“You and Darcy seem to be getting along well,” Thor remarked as they both turned to look out over the New York cityscape.

“We are,” Loki admitted. “She is free of judgment in both word and deed. It makes for pleasant company.”

“You should be careful, Loki.”

Loki had to resist the urge to groan outwardly. The oaf couldn’t go one conversation without berating him, could he?

“About what, Thor?” he asked irritably.

“Jane fears Darcy may be growing too fond of you. You should maintain your distance.”

Loki snorted into his glass. “You have us shackled together, you fool.”

“You know what I mean, Loki. Darcy is a friend, and like a sister to Jane. I would not see her harmed.”

“And what makes you think I would harm her?”

“Satisfaction is not in your nature,” Thor reminded him. “I fear the day Darcy no longer holds your interest. Just heed my words, brother: Keep your distance. Do not allow Darcy to think there could be more to your friendship. It would be in everyone’s best interest, including yours. Darcy is a woman of strong emotions, with access to advanced weaponry,” Thor added with a wry smile.

They both chuckled at that, remembering past misadventures involving scorned lovers and their well-armed brothers. But Thor’s attention was soon demanded by some partygoer or other, leaving Loki alone on the balcony feeling the slight tug of the magical leash. He took a sip from his drink, Midgardian scotch mixed with something stronger from Thor’s private cellar, and shook his head. How could Thor be so foolish to forget that the surest way to get either one of them to do anything was to simply tell them they could not? Not that his words really mattered. Loki knew he was well on his way to falling in love with Darcy Lewis before his idiot brother even opened his mouth.

He wandered back inside as he contemplated this fact, staying to the edge of the room, as close to his current warden as he could be bothered, as his brother regaled the mortals with tales of the mighty Thor. He snorted derisively and took another sip from his drink, his eyes wandering over the throng of people, seeking out the one person who never failed to make an evening in the company of others bearable.

“Looking for someone?” asked the red-haired spider as she appeared at his side, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Not you,” he replied cheerfully.

“I’m well aware,” Natasha replied snidely, sipping on a glass of champagne. “She’s on the west wall fending off offers to fill up her dance card from various lab techs. She’s fine, she can handle the socially awkward and inebriated,” Natasha added when she sensed Loki flinch. “No need to make a scene.”

“And Darcy said you were all completely oblivious when it came to her,” Loki mused, not bothering to lie outright to the one Avenger who had ever been able to ‘play’ him.

“People don’t think she’s a threat, so she doesn’t register.”

“But you do?”

“She’s not a threat in the traditional sense, but she has the potential to be the cause of a lot of havoc by simply being absent,” she said, staring at Loki pointedly.

“I take it you haven’t voiced these concerns with anyone else,” he said quietly, nursing his drink as he tried not to think about all the ways Darcy could suddenly become absent from his life. “Otherwise I wouldn’t currently be attending the most ostentatious party of the year.”

“Currently, I don’t see it being a problem, but should it ever looks like it’s changing for the negative, I’ll neutralise the situation. And then I’ll tell Fury.”

“I doubt such drastic action will be necessary,” Loki replied cooly. “It’s hardly serious.”

“Stop lying to yourself,” Natasha advised quietly. “And her.”

Loki sighed internally as the spy went back to join the archer and the good doctor at the bar. Eventually Loki spied Darcy across the room, rolling her eyes as one of Jane’s lab assistants flirted with her ineptly. He caught Darcy’s eye and she tipped her glass at him, a gesture he returned with a small smile.

 _Perhaps I should make it one of my resolutions,_ Loki thought sombrely as the crowd began the countdown to the New Year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> re Darcy’s personal reveal, sorry if that felt a little too deliberate/out of left field/I honestly can’t think of the word. I’ve read a lot of fics where they’ve made Darcy adopted to give her and Loki something to bond over. And I think that’s what I had originally, but I tweaked it to make it somewhat original. But basically, I just wanted the scene to be a truth for a truth, a moment of shared honesty and vulnerability so that they were sort of on equal footing. If that makes sense. :/


	11. Chapter 11

Darcy tapped her pen irritably against her desk. The music from her earbuds was currently failing to drown out the incessant arguing of all the scientists in the room. They’d been at it for hours without a break and Darcy’s caffeine levels were crashing, and her patience was fading fast. It didn’t help matters that she was going through the worst bout of PMS in recent memory. She’d gone through an entire block of chocolate but it hadn’t hit the spot. The one thing she was certain that would cure what ailed her was currently several floors below her sparring with Thor, as he had been every other day that month. In fact, Darcy had barely spent an hour in Loki’s company, dressed or otherwise, since New Year’s.

 _Speak of the devil…_ she mused and Thor wandered into the lab, Loki trailing behind him. Darcy caught his eye and mimed putting a gun to her head. Loki smirked, glancing at the bickering scientists, and gave her a sympathetic look.

 _That’s what our whatever-this-is-relationship has come to? Miming?_ Darcy thought irritably.

She pulled out her earbuds, intent on having a conversation with him, whilst Thor was busy trying to get a word in edgewise with Jane, when she heard her name used in the negative.

“What about me?” she snapped.

“You forgot to order the capacitor we needed,” one of Jane’s assistants, some desperate-to-finish-his-thesis science major, sneered.

“That’s what this is about?” Darcy shouted, jumping to her feet. “You’ve been fighting with this piece of junk – and each other – all day – because of a _capacitor_?”

“Not just any capacitor, Darcy,” Jane started, only for Darcy to raise a hand to silence her.

“Oh, no, not any old capacitor,” Darcy agreed sarcastically. “Was it a super, duper, special capacitor that you couldn’t possibly have built in house?”

“Yes…”

“The same stupid capacitor that I spent the better part of two days trolling the most boring parts of the internet for? The same stupid capacitor that got delivered a week ago?” she all but yelled.

“Darcy! Why didn’t you tell me it got delivered?”

“I did!” Darcy shouted back. “I waved the box under your nose, so proud of myself for getting this impossible-to-find stupid fucking thing, and do you remember what you said to me? I’m guessing not,” Darcy added before Jane could reply. “You said, and I quote, ‘Darcy, why did you buy that? I don’t need that anymore. I figured out a way around it.’” Darcy paused for effect, waiting for Jane to appear bashful before continuing. “And then you told me to give it Dr Jackass over here so that he could put it in storage for you. And do you remember what you did?” Darcy asked, pointing at the embarrassed lab assistant. “You looked at me like I had handed you a dog turd in a paper bag and you dumped it… right here,” Darcy announced, retrieving the small box from underneath a stack of winter coats and week old instrument readouts.

“So there’s your stupid capacitor,” she sneered, shoving it in the chest of the lab assistant. “So for the love of God, would you all do me a favour and shut up? Go get some air, some lunch, some wine, some weed – whatever you need to calm-the-fuck down. No, you know what?” she declared, sweeping all her belongings off her desk and into her bag. “I’m going to go do all those things, the rest of you can go screw yourselves for all I care.”

Darcy ignored the stunned stares she was getting as she made her way to the exit, only to find a smirking Loki blocking her way.

“What the hell are you smiling at?” she snapped, shoving him hard. “You’ve been ignoring me for weeks – you don’t get to smile at me.”

And with one more shove she stormed out of the lab, raiding Tony’s bar before locking herself in her room.

** *** **

Darcy groaned with frustration, kicking off the sheets as she struggled to sit up. She’d whiled away the afternoon with a few hours of Cupcake Wars and a tequila induced nap, but now that it was time for her to actually sleep she found she couldn’t. Not without scratching an itch first. Her eyes flicked from the drawer where she kept her vibrator, to the wall that separated her from Loki, and back again. One was an obviously safer choice, the other… not so much. Darcy opened the drawer, stared at the pink phallic-shaped gizmo and slammed the drawer shut. _Screw safe._

“Friday,” she whispered as she approached her door.

“Yes, Ms Lewis,” the AI’s voice replied, at a volume that mirrored her own.

“Is the coast clear?”

“Yes, Ms Lewis. You will be able to walk down the hallway without being spotted for the next 53 seconds.”

“I love your specificity,” she mumbled, peering down the hallway and making a very quiet run for it, slipping into Loki’s room.

“What are you doing?” Loki asked, peering at her over his book with a mix of confusion and concern.

“Shhhh…” Darcy scolded, tiptoeing over to his bed. She had planned to crawl along his lithe form to kiss him, but he met her at the foot of the bed, pushing her back towards the door.

“You can’t be here, Darcy.”

“I need you,” Darcy admitted.

“I need you too,” Loki replied, kissing her quickly. “But you’ll have to be patient and wait until we’re alone,” he grumbled, reaching for the door handle.

“If you send me back to my room,” she threatened darkly. “I’m going to get my vibrator, lean against that wall, and make myself scream over and over again. Without you.”

Loki faltered then, incensed by the idea, gritting his teeth as Darcy smiled victoriously. Darcy closed the space between them, trying to still his twitching upper lip between her own.

“I need you,” she whispered urgently, slipping a hand under the band of his sweatpants to stroke his hardening length. Loki gasped at the contact and promptly lost his internal struggle. He kissed her hungrily, almost slamming her against the door before he remembered the necessity for silence. He picked Darcy up and carried her to the bathroom, closing the wardrobe door, and then the bathroom door, behind them. He ignored her cheeky grin as he sat her upon the sink, moving to turn the shower on in the hopes it would mute the sounds of their activities, and give himself something of an alibi if Thor decided to check in on him. He returned to her, taking her face in his hands and kissing her slowly, intending take his time to savour the intimate moment, rare that it was. Darcy, it seemed, had other ideas. She gripped him firmly through his pants, biting his lip less-than-gently.

“Patience,” Loki moaned, his hips bucking into her touch.

“Now,” Darcy countered.

Loki grabbed Darcy’s roaming hands and pinned them behind her back, taking the opportunity to press himself against her.

“If you are going to act like a bitch in heat, perhaps I should treat you like one,” he growled, his low voice making Darcy shiver. Before she could ask him what he meant Loki had pulled her off the sink and spun her around, forcing her to grip the edge. He pushed her thick wavy hair to one side, twisting it in his hands as his lips assaulted her exposed neck, all the while his eyes, dark with lust, were locked on Darcy’s via the mirror. “Not one word, Ms Lewis,” Loki warned.

Darcy could only bit her lip and whimper in reply as Loki’s hand skimmed over her nightshirt, his fingers hooking the waist of her underwear and wrenching them down. He pushed his sweatpants down over his hips and took his cock in hand, rubbing it along Darcy’s slit but once before thrusting into her to the hilt, biting back a groan as he found her more than ready for him. Loki watched Darcy’s expressive face in the mirror with rapt attention, loving the way her full lips alternated between forming the letter ‘O’ and the word ‘fuck’ as he pulled himself out to the tip and then slammed back into her. He stilled, trying to compose himself, only for Darcy to flash him a cheeky, self-satisfied grin as she pushed back against him. Loki smirked at his naïve Midgardian – _did she really think she was still in control?_ He pushed her shirt up, squeezing her breasts along the way, and held the gathered fabric in front of her mouth.

“You’re going to need this,” he smirked as she bit down on it. His hands slid down her now bare torso before gripping her hips tightly. He paused for a moment, giving Darcy a chance to grow impatient again before he began fucking her relentlessly, his hips slapping against her pert ass, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips. It was desperate, and rough, and over far too quickly, not that both parties didn’t get what they wanted.

“Fuck… Darcy…” Loki muttered, his head resting on her shoulder. Darcy let her nightshirt fall from her mouth as she panted breath, slowly turning around so that she could kiss Loki properly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Whatever for?” Loki smirked.

“For being mean,” she blushed. “I was just really, really horny.”

“I don’t recall complaining,” he chuckled. “I would have had you like this every night – every hour – if I could.”

“And why didn’t you? I’ve hardly seen you since New Year’s,” Darcy pouted.

“Thor has become concerned for your growing affection for me,” Loki replied with a roll of his eyes. “He fears us getting too close and is trying to force some distance between us, at Jane’s insistence, I’m sure. Little do they know how much you crave my touch…” he whispered, his fingertips grazing her thighs.

“Oh, I hate him,” Darcy sighed as Loki kissed her neck.

“Mmm, say that again,” Loki hummed.

“I hate Thor,” she giggled as Loki peppered her with kisses. “You’re messed up,” she teased when he pulled away.

Loki grinned cheekily before sobering somewhat. “Best you return to your own rooms now, Darcy.”

“Kicking a girl out before she’s even got the feeling back in her legs? That’s so rude.”

“Best you go now,” he repeated, leading Darcy out of the bathroom. “Before I quite forget the need for silence and make you scream my name.”

“Promises, promises…”

“I assure you, Ms Lewis. Should I ever make you a promise in regards to the satisfaction I could wring from your body, I will keep it,” he added darkly, causing Darcy’s already weak knees to buckle.

“Oh god, don’t tease,” she moaned, clinging to his shoulders to keep herself upright. “So, um, I’m going to be unavailable for a few days,” she advised awkwardly. “But after that I’m going to need you. A lot,” she added as an afterthought, licking her lips absently. “I don’t care how you do it, even if you have to tell Thor to stick that bracelet up his ass. I just need you, okay?”

“Say that again.”

“Thor can stick it.”

“No,” Loki laughed softly. “The other part.”

“I need you,” Darcy repeated, her arms curling around his neck as she kissed him goodnight. “And I can’t wait another month for a fix.”

Loki kissed her back and reached for the door handle as Darcy consulted Friday. He waited until she reached her room undetected before closing the door and trudging back to the bathroom. He stared at the wall that connected their two rooms imaging the doorway he would create should he have access to his full powers within the tower. Hell, if he had access to his powers he’d simply teleport them both far away from the tower, where they could be free to indulge in each other without fear of being discovered, or being quiet.

 _If Darcy was not opposed to such a thing,_ a doubtful thought posited. _A fix,_ the thought repeated. _Was that truly how she felt about our relations?_ Loki sighed and leant against the sink, avoiding his reflection and trying not to imagine Darcy’s body pressed up against his. His moment of doubt was interrupted by a _tap-tap-tap_ on his wall. Loki smiled, his doubt evaporating for the time being, before making use of the already running shower.


	12. Chapter 12

Darcy woke the next morning and found herself feeling disappointed at finding the other half of her bed empty. All this sneaking around bullshit was wearing thin and she longed to be able to spend the night with Loki, not because everyone else was out, but just because.

 _Because I want to get laid_ , she assured herself. _Yep, that’s it. I just want regular orgasms. I’m not having feelings. I’m not,_ she desperately tried to convince herself. _I just want sex. And chocolate. Chocolate? Why do I smell chocolate?_

Darcy stumbled out of bed, threw on some fit-to-be-seen-in-front-of-the-Avengers clothing, and headed to the kitchen. And what she saw left her slack-jawed and speechless. Well, almost.

“Are you baking? Why are you baking?” she stammered as she watched Loki pull a tray out of the oven, closing the door with his foot.

“I sought out Dr Foster’s advice on how best to give us all a reprieve from this mood of yours and she suggested ‘brownies’.”

“Wait – you asked Jane’s advice?” Darcy turned her head so fast she almost gave herself whiplash. “He asked?” she asked Jane. “Like nicely? With a minimum of snide remarks?”

“Mhmm,” Jane replied with tight smile before returning her attention to her coffee. “I think he just really didn’t want to run the risk of you tasing him again.”

Loki and Darcy shared a knowing smile as he cut up the hot baked goods and offered Darcy one on a plate, plus her usual morning coffee.

“You made brownies,” she sniffled, her hormones getting the best of her again. Yep, it was definitely just hormones.

“Anything to get you to stop yelling at us,” he teased.

“Mmmmm…” Darcy moaned, biting into her delicious excuse for a breakfast. “I’ll just keep stuffing my face with these; I won’t even _talk_.”

Darcy was about to go for her second piece when the call to action sounded through the building.

“Everyone suit up,” the Captain ordered and the Avengers, including Loki, filed out, running his hand over the small of Darcy’s back as he passed behind her.

“Stay safe and watch each other’s backs,” Darcy called after them, spitting brownie crumbs across the counter, onto her boss’s shirt.

“Ugh. Really, Darcy?”

** *** **

The thunder god’s laughter woke Darcy up from a dead sleep. It took her a minute to get her bearings but then she was hastily fumbling for her glasses and pulling on the pyjama pants she had discarded soon after settling under the blankets.

She stumbled towards the common area, grateful for Thor’s boisterous laughing. She took it as a sign that the mission went well and no one got hurt too badly. That theory went out the window when she found Loki leaning against a wall, as far away from Thor as his magical leash would allow, battered and bruised, his breathing shallow, a hand placed over his ribs.

“Loki? Are you okay?” Darcy asked urgently, rushing to his side.

“I’m fine,” Loki forced himself to reply, but couldn’t help the pained whimper that escaped his lips.

“Like hell you are! Why didn’t you go to the medical bay?”

“I shall be fine once I can return to my rooms and focus on healing myself. It just seems that that may be some time from now,” he added, jerking his head weakly towards to where Thor was seated with several of the others, beers in hand and several empties already on the table.

“That’s bullshit,” Darcy muttered angrily before storming over the assembled Avengers. “Hey! Thor! What the hell is wrong with you? Why haven’t you taken Loki to the medical bay? He’s hurt.”

Thor attempted to look apologetic but before he could open his mouth Tony interjected.

“He’s just being pouty because big bro saved the day, and not him. Besides, he’s got that whole Asgardian invulnerability thing going for him. He’ll be fine.”

“Not when his abilities are being limited by magic bracelets,” Darcy shot back pointedly. “Look at him! He’s having trouble breathing – he’s probably broken a rib.”

“Easy, kiddo. Need we remind you that he’s the bad guy?”

“Since when? Since the Chitauri? That was five years ago. And how many times has he saved the day since then? How many times has he saved the goddamn universe – not to mention your own stupid asses, huh?”

“That doesn’t make us forget what he did. He’s never going to earn our forgiveness for that,” Clint added quietly.

“No? Fine. Then how about a little respect for your teammate, huh? Just a smidgeon of respect that says you give enough of a shit about him to not let him bleed to death in the hallway while you get drunk and pat yourselves on the back for being big goddamn heroes?” She grabbed Thor’s arm and took the bracelets authority for herself, storming back to Loki’s side, but not without shouting “You’re all assholes!” over her shoulder.

Darcy put Loki’s arm around her shoulder and helped him into his bathroom, ignoring his weak protests as she quickly removed his armour and numerous other layers until he was sitting on the edge of his bathtub in just his leather trousers. Darcy wet a wash cloth and began dabbing gently at the cuts on his face, trying not to look down at the large purple bruise forming on his torso.

“Is your magic doing its thing now?”

“Slowly but surely,” he replied. “You should leave, Darcy. You shouldn’t be in my chambers any longer than is appropriate.”

“Fuck appropriate,” Darcy shot back. “Even if we forget about the sex, you’re still kind of my best friend, Mischief. I take that responsibility very seriously.”

“And why would I ever want to forget about the sex?” he smirked, his green eyes focused on her.

“We do have wicked sexual chemistry, huh?” she smiled back. “And occasionally tasers.”

Loki stopped her ministrations and took her wrists gently in hand, pulling her closer until their lips met, imbuing their kiss with all the gratitude he felt.

“You’re my best friend as well, Darcy. My only friend, and I thank you for that,” he whispered.

It was a perfect moment, but it was not to last, for Loki’s doorway was soon filled with the confused and concerned form of his brother.

“Loki, let her go,” he warned.

“I’m not holding her against her will, you imbecile,” Loki growled, taking Darcy’s hands in his.

Thor glanced at their joined hands, unsure what to make of their sudden intimacy.

“Darcy, you should return to your chambers.”

“No,” Darcy replied quietly, unable to look at the God of Thunder.

“Darcy,” Loki implored, brushing his thumb across her cheek. “You can leave. I’ll be fine.”

Darcy kissed Loki defiantly, ignoring Thor’s discomfort as he hovered in the doorway.

“Get some rest, and I’ll see you in the morning, Mischief. But don’t eat until I get up – we’re going to go try those orange and dark chocolate waffles we talked about, okay?”

“Sounds wonderful, Darcy,” Loki replied, smiling brightly, kissing her hands again before finally letting her go.

Loki refused to even glance at his brother until Darcy was out of sight. His wistful smile quickly replaced with a scowl as he pushed past Thor to sit on his bed, trying to make himself comfortable as he reclined against the headboard.

“I have no interest in whatever you have to say on the matter, but I know that will not stop you from proceeding, so say what you must and get out, Thor. I wish to rest.”

“I told you to keep your distance, but I assume I was already too late. How long have you been manipulating her?”

Loki laughed bitterly. “I have not. If anything she has been manipulating me. Not that you’d believe me.”

“Of course not, Darcy is incapable of manipulating the likes of you.”

“Truly? Do you think I wanted this music?” he asked, grabbing the iPod on his nightstand. “Or the clothes I wear? Do you think I enjoyed Midgardian television before I met her? Do you think I ever looked forward to someone’s company as much as I do hers before now?”

“You truly care for her?”

“As I was saying before you barged in, she is my only friend.”

“Are you always so _familiar_ with your friends, brother?”

“I said ‘only friend’, Thor. I have no others from which to draw a comparison.”

“Have you…”

“Had my wicked way with her? Frequently,” he added, grinning viciously at Thor’s discomfort. “And before you level another accusation at me – I have never taken her against her will, or harmed her in ways she did not ask me to.”

Thor cringed at that, pacing at the foot of Loki’s bed, unable to look at his brother.

“Darcy is not like that.”

“And how would you know? Your beloved Jane blinds you for seeing Darcy as she truly is,” he sneered, wielding the word ‘beloved’ like a vile curse. “She is no sweet child, eager to serve the illustrious Avengers. Why just last night she was sneaking into my chambers, begging me to take again and again…”

“Be silent, Loki!”

Loki attempted to laugh, clutching his ribs as pain shot through him.

“As much as I would love to be berated further, I need rest. Perhaps your barrage of insults and threats can wait until the morning.”

“If you hurt her, Loki…”

“ _In the morning_ ,” Loki shouted. “In the morning you can lock me in an interrogation room for the rest of the week, I don’t care. But right now - get out.”

Thor shook his head in dismay, throwing up his hands in defeat and stormed out, doors slamming in his wake. Loki shifted as little as possible, trying to move himself into a slightly more comfortable position and closed his eyes. A few hours later, only after the pain in his chest faded, did he notice the distinct lack of sensation around his wrist.


	13. Chapter 13

Darcy tossed and turned, too angry to sleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about the injured god in the room next to her. Her thoughts chased themselves around and around until they exhausted her, and just as she was about to finally drift off when suddenly… 

**“DARCY!”**

Darcy screamed and in a blind panic reached for her taser, always kept within easy reach, and fired, the wires embedding themselves in the wall two feet from the blurry mass she soon realised was Thor.

“Jeeeezus Christ, Thor! You gave me a fucking heart attack! What the hell?!” 

“Where’s Loki?”

“What?”

“Where’s Loki?” he repeated, looking more worried-slash-angry than she had ever seen him.

“I don’t know what you’re…” Darcy trailed off as she kicked off her blankets and stood up, staring in stunned silence as the gold bracelet fell off her bed and rolled past her feet. “Oh no…”

** *** **

Within ten minutes of Loki officially being declared MIA, or ‘on the run’, depending who you spoke to, Nick Fury turned up, overriding Friday’s protocols to take the lift straight up to the residential level. He could be heard yelling before the doors were even open.

“Someone want to tell me how the hell our most valuable and most dangerous asset just up and walked out of the building?”

“Actually,” Tony piped up. “There’s no evidence to suggest that he even walked out of his room.”

“Who was wearing the supposedly escape-proof shackle last?” Fury asked, pointedly ignoring Tony.

Darcy, standing awkwardly in the background, still wearing pyjamas, bed hair, and her glasses askew, hesitantly raised her hand.

“Interrogation room, now. You too, Thor.”

** *** **

Darcy sat nervously one side of the table whilst Thor leant against a wall, eyes fixed to the floor, deep in thought. Fury was pacing on the other side of the table, holding the two now inert bracelets in his hand. He dropped them on the table in disgust.

“Escape-proof. That’s what you said to me,” he reminded Thor. “You promised me that only you, the wearer of the second bracelet, could give Loki access to his powers, so please explain to me, in very simple terms, how in the hell this happened,” he added loudly, leaning down to level a glare at Darcy.

“I didn’t mean to?” she offered weakly. “I didn’t even know that I was doing it.”

“It is true,” Thor added before Fury got, well, more furious. “I never told Darcy how to access the bracelet’s full range of abilities.”

“Letting Loki go free being one of them.”

“Only if the wearer of the second bracelet truly wanted it to be so,” Thor concurred.

“Ms Lewis, did Loki put this idea in your head?”

“No. No!” she repeated defensively. “I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to. It’s just… everyone was being mean to him. It wasn’t fair, and…”

Before Darcy could cobble together further apologies Fury’s cell phone buzzed, as did every cell phone of every person in the tower with high level clearance.  
Fury glanced at his screen, his one visible eyebrow slowly arching up in surprise.

“’I, Loki of Midgard, formerly of Asgard and Jotunheim,” Fury read aloud. “Do hereby swear, by the branches of the World’s Tree, and by the soul of my mother, Frigga Jordsdóttir, to assist the group known as the Avengers whenever they request it.’”

“That is the most solemn oath that Loki could make,” Thor advised, looking quietly stunned at his brothers words.

“Asgardians take their oaths very seriously,” Darcy repeated to herself, allowing herself the smallest of smiles.

“’All you need do is text me a location on this device and I will teleport myself there in moments,’” Fury continued as another text came in. “’And please do not punish Ms Lewis for her part in my departure. I’m sure she is even now unaware that it was simply her kindness that released me from Odin’s shackles. Please give her my thanks.’”

Darcy would have blushed if it wasn’t that Loki’s words were coming out of Fury’s mouth. Eventually Fury dismissed Darcy, turning his attention to global surveillance and ensuring Loki didn’t cause any mayhem in between keeping his oath. 

The residential level was a ghost town by the time Darcy got back there. Everyone was off doubling security, hiding their favourite coffee mug, deleting their internet history… whatever they needed to do to feel safer now that Loki was out in the world with his powers. 

Darcy stood outside Loki’s bedroom, finding it completely empty save for the bed, which had been made with plain white sheets. She sighed and hugged herself, trudging to her room intent on sleeping the rest of the day away. She gasped as she stepped inside, too distracted by the vase of flowers on her nightstand to notice a certain Norse god closing the door behind her.

Loki cleared his throat, causing Darcy to squeal as she spun around, much to his delight.

“Loki!” she mouthed, before continuing with her aggressive miming. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighbourhood, saw your light on…” he smirked.

“I mean it, Loki,” Darcy shot back in a hushed whisper. “What are you doing back here? You could have gone wherever you wanted, anywhere in the friggin universe!”

“Precisely,” Loki replied matter-of-factly, offering Darcy a sincere smile.

“Oh,” Darcy blushed, taken aback.

“Besides, I thought it would be unforgivably rude to leave without saying a proper goodbye.”

“Hence the flowers?” 

“Actually, those are, in part, a thank you, and an apology for this morning’s interrogation, as well as an advance on our next date.”

“Next date?”

“Well, yes,” Loki continued, somewhat nervously. “I was hoping that you would consider continuing to see me, despite my new freelance status.”

“Of course,” Darcy replied, a little too quickly for her own liking. “I would love to go on another date with you.”

“In that case,” Loki said, breathing an internal sigh of relief, handing Darcy her cell phone. “Please let me know when you would like to meet. I have magically encrypted it so that SHIELD cannot monitor your conversations, internet usage, or file sharing. So do feel free to, as they say, ‘send nudes.’ Ow!” he laughed, as Darcy punched him in the arm.

“Just for that, you’re not getting any,” she taunted, sticking out her tongue.

“Well then, I should go,” Loki said after a sobering beat. 

The pair shifted awkwardly, exchanging nervous smiles as sentimental phrases like “come with me” and “take me with you” went unsaid.

Loki turned to leave but then did a complete 180. “Wait, I’m forgetting something,” he muttered before reaching for Darcy and pulling her close, kissing her until she had to break away for a breath.

“Wow…” Darcy gasped to an empty room, falling back onto her bed. But she barely had a moment to contemplate his absence before the phone in her hand beeped.

_See you soon, Ms Lewis._

 


	14. Chapter 14

Darcy rolled out of bed sometime after lunch, after catching up on her lost hours of sleep, and decided to treat herself with a hot bath. She got herself a coffee, as well as the last of the brownies, and took them, along with her phone, into the bathroom. She got undressed while the tub was filling up, smiling as the scent of her favourite bath bomb filled the room. She sank down into the warm water, sighing as the heat seeped into her aching muscles. She spent a moment in blissful relaxation, imbibing caffeine and chocolate, before waking up her phone and flicking through her social media feeds. When she opened Tumblr she was greeted with a new message.

[Osmosis? Really? (X) - loki-of-the-nine] 

“What the…”

Against her better judgment she clicked on the link and was taken to an old post of her own; a photo of Loki on one of his first missions with the Avengers, a dagger in one hand and a scowl on his face. Her tags, though mostly unintelligible, mentioned something about ‘panties going out the window like Tony Stark on Invasion Day’. Darcy groaned. To be fair, she had been on her second bottle of wine at the time of the post. Darcy, biting her lip and cringing with embarrassment, went to the sender’s page and found “The official blog of Loki. Kneel and swear your loyalty.”

“You didn’t…” she muttered, scrolling through as quickly as she could. 

Post after post was Loki replying to messages from his adoring public, ranging from tame “You’re so hot” type messages to explicit and downright perverted offers of sexual services that would put Darcy’s actions the previous night to shame. She paused at a selfie he had posted, taken with some magical assistance atop Avengers Towers, his arms outstretch and that god-damn smirk firmly in place. The caption encouraging his fans to keep sending in their messages of worship. Darcy snorted and shook her head, flicking back to her inbox.

[You fucking diva. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? – tasedandbemused] 

[You mortals have a history of worshipping beings who give no sign that they are listening, I am simply amending that. They seem very grateful to finally be heard. – loki-of-the-nine]

[Pfft. Whatever. I’m totally offended. I thought after the other night your ego wouldn’t need to be stroked for at least a few more days. – tasedandbemused] 

[Dearest Darcy, quell your rage. My ‘ego’ shall be stroked by your hand or by none, I swear it.  – loki-of-the-nine]

“Oh my god…” Darcy mumbled, unable to stop an embarrassed smile gracing her features.

[Speaking of… Would this Friday be okay for our next date? – tasedandbemused]

[Of course. Would you like to decide the details? - loki-of-the-nine]

[Surely you, with all your fancy powers, can plan a date we’ll both enjoy. – tasedandbemused]

[You trust me to do such a thing? – loki-of-the-nine]

[It’s a risk, but I wouldn’t be banging the God of Mischief if I couldn’t handle a little risk :P So… Friday after work?]

[It’s a date. ;) - loki-of-the-nine]

[Look at you, typing the lingo :P See you Friday. Until then - stay out of trouble, Mischief. ;)  – tasedandbemused]

Darcy put down her phone before the back-and-forth continued; she could have easily spent the whole day messaging him, which was slightly worrying. She looked at her phone and began thinking about all the fangirls Loki was messaging only to throw it onto a pile of clothes across the room in annoyance – more at her own feelings, and the head spinning confusion they caused, than Loki’s need for praise. 

“Ugh,” Darcy grimaced, angrily finishing the last Loki-made brownie. 

It was just supposed to be fun and easy, wasn’t it? It’s not like they could have a proper, serious relationship, anyway. He was a thousand years older than her for a start. And an alien, and a (hopefully) reformed supervillain. And now that he had his freedom, and access to an entire legion of fangirls, what guarantees did Darcy have that he wanted to see her exclusively? They’d never discussed it, ego stroking comments aside, and the more Darcy thought about it the less she wanted to think about it. 

_It’s fine,_ Darcy told herself. Loki could do whatever – and whoever – he wanted, and she would be fine with that. He had made plans to see her on Friday, and as long as he didn’t cancel on her, it would be fiiiiine. 

Darcy groaned and submerged herself in the bathwater, cursing her hormones for the ache in her chest.

** *** **

The work week passed quickly for Darcy was determined to keep herself busy lest her mind wander back to immature arguments about whether Loki liked her or liked-liked her, which was difficult when she got at least two pictures a day from him from various corners of the globe. Most were accompanied by the hashtag #househunting (Buckingham Palace, the White House, Kimye’s mansion) or #dateideas (an open air opera in Rome, a plate of dumplings on the Great Wall of China, an open bank vault door and a pile of gold bars) and never failed to elicit a smile.

Friday finally arrived and on her way back to her room after Jane had cut her loose Darcy bumped into Thor.

“Oh, hey, Thor,” she said lamely, not quite able to meet his eyes.

“Good afternoon, Darcy. I take it by your presence that Jane has decided to finish work early?”

“Yeah, something about a hot date with the God of Thunder,” she joked half-heartedly. Thor smiled politely and went to walk passed her, but Darcy stopped him. “Um, I know we haven’t talked about it, and perhaps we shouldn’t, especially when the walls around here definitely have ears, but thanks for not saying anything about… you know.”

“It was not my place to say. And I don’t believe you deliberately freed him or had any ill intent.”

“I swear I didn’t. I was, I was just mad… at you,” Darcy admitted.

Thor smiled warmly. “You care about him. As I hope he cares for you.”

Darcy tried not to turn as red as a tomato but failed miserably.

“So, you’re not mad at me?”

“Never, Darcy.”

“Thank you!” Darcy cried, standing on her tip toes to hug him. “I really don’t want you to be mad at me.”

“Will you be seeing him again?” Thor asked once Darcy relinquished her hold on him.

“We’re supposed to be going out tonight, actually.”

“Give him my best. Or perhaps don’t. It might spoil his good mood,” Thor jested before taking his leave.

Darcy practically skipped to her room, closing the door before reaching for her phone.

“Darcy,” Loki’s practically purred.

“Hey,” she replied, unable to stop a wide smile lighting up her face. “You know, we never discussed where we were supposed to rendezvous. Some great date organiser you are,” she teased.

“Well, I don’t think it’s wise for me to come to you, so you’ll just have to come to me.”

“And you are where, exactly?”

There was silence on the other end and Darcy became momentarily worried that Loki really hadn’t thought their date through very well at all, but then a familiar tingling sensation spread over her skin. It was the same feeling she got when she and Thor exchanged the bracelet. Darcy glanced down at her feet and saw a green glow encircle them before working its way up her body.

“What the hell are you doing?” Darcy shouted into the phone.

“Teleporting you, obviously.”

“Hey! Wait, not now – I’m not even dressed!”


	15. Chapter 15

When the glow faded from her vision Darcy gasped at the view before her. She glanced about at her surroundings, hastily taking note of the industrial, minimalist bedroom, all concrete and sharp edges, before turning back to the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows. She sighed wistfully and stepped closer the glass, looking out over dark forests and snow covered mountains.

“Wow…”

“Beautiful view, is it not?”

Darcy turned and smiled at the God of Mischief, sporting his favoured leather pants and a green tunic.

“I’ll say. Where the hell are we?”

“An abandoned Hydra base from the nineteen forties, carved into the side of a mountain. I found mention of it in SHIELD’s archives and, being completely inaccessible these days, I thought it would suit my needs perfectly. I gutted it, and modernised it a bit.”

Darcy couldn’t help but laugh to herself about the strangeness of her current situation. They regarded each other for a moment, both wearing flirtatious smiles waiting for the other to speak.

“So, about our date…” Darcy said finally, ignoring Loki’s victorious smirk. “I’m guessing there’s not a Starbucks anywhere nearby.”

“I did say ‘inaccessible,’ Darcy. To all but me,” he added, stepping forward. “I can teleport us anywhere. So…” he smiled, leaning closer, his gaze flicking between Darcy’s eyes and her lips. “Are you ready for our date? I was thinking something formal.”

“Um, I’m not really dressed for anything other than pizza and beer. You kind of beamed me up before I could take a shower and get changed,” she said accusingly before Loki cut her off with a kiss.

“Bibbity.”

The familiar tingling sensation surrounding them as he kissed her again.

“Bobbity.”

And again.

“Boo.”

Loki, now dressed in the finest damn suit Darcy could have imagined, stepped aside so that she could see her reflection in the large mirror on the wall behind him.

“Holy shit…”

Darcy ran hand over the rich green fabric of the mermaid style gown, smiling at the way it clung to her curves perfectly.

“Oh, Loki… It’s beautiful.”

“Only because it’s on you.”

“Uhuh, sure.”

Loki stepped between Darcy and her reflection, tilting her chin up so she stopped looking down at her stiletto covered feet.

“You are beautiful, Darcy Lewis. An exquisite creature worthy of all the attention and praise I bestow on you and more. I will not be argued on this point,” he said in a quiet voice that demanded deference. Darcy bit her lip in submission. Loki’s hand moved slightly lower, his fingers tracing patterns over her décolletage until Darcy felt his magic fade leaving a black diamond pendant on a simple gold chain hanging around her neck. He removed her glasses and took her phone, vanishing them into some pocket dimension with a simple flourish.

“Show off,” Darcy muttered, fighting the urge to continue staring at her surprisingly gorgeous reflection. She turned back to Loki and found his eyes roaming over her hungrily.

“Date first. Sex later,” she blushed.

“As my lady commands,” Loki grinned, placing Darcy’s arm in the crook of his. “Shall we?”

“Shall we what?” Darcy asked, confused, staring out at the snow-covered landscape that unfolded before them.

“Take five steps forwards.”

“Into the window? Very funny.”

“Don’t you trust me,” he smirked.

“Fine,” she sighed, clearing her throat and facing the window determinedly.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Loki walked in step with her and just as they took their fifth step, when they should have run into the glass, the window and the world outside melted away and Darcy found herself standing on the sidewalk of a bustling city.

“Holy shit!” she exclaimed, much to the bemusement of passers-by, causing Loki to bark with laughter.

“Impressed?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” she replied, taking in her new surroundings. “Ooh, chilly,” she shivered, glancing up at the night sky. Loki, though he held nothing in his hands, acted as though he was placing a coat around her shoulders and when he pulled his hands away Darcy was wearing a dark fur stole. “Oh my god! Is this real?”

“Well,” Loki shrugged. “It’s vintage. No animals died _recently_ for it.”

Darcy glared and then her eyes went wide when they caught sight of some twinkling lights visible through the buildings behind Loki. She placed a hand on his chest and pushed him out of the way to get a better look.

“The Eiffel Tower?! I’m in Paris? I’m in Paris!”

“It is said that Paris is the most romantic city on Midgard, so I thought it would be a suitable site for the first portion of our date. Have I chosen well?”

Darcy could only nod mutely, a trembling hand covering her mouth.

“Now, Ms Lewis,” Loki said, taking her arm in his once more. “We have a dinner reservation awaiting us.”

They walked across the Seine, paused before the glass pyramid of the Louvre, and followed pathways through the Tuileries Garden until Loki brought Darcy to an upscale hotel. He ignored her curious and insistent stare, smiling smugly as they made their way to an upper level and up to a formally dressed maître d'.

“Réservation sous ‘Olsen’, je vous remercie.”

“You speak French?” Darcy whispered.

“You weren’t surprised that I spoke English,” he whispered back.

“Si vous voulez bien me suivre, monsieur.”

They were led through the opulent restaurant towards large glass double doors. Loki smiled, watching Darcy’s expression as the doors were opened and their table, [and the exquisite view beyond it](http://bellanyc.com/beauty-and-brains-full-package-destinations/le-meurice-royal-belle-etoile-suite-701-terrasse1-guillaume-de-laubier/), were revealed to her.

“Oh my god…” she gasped, stepping out onto the balcony. “Loki…”

“Do you like it? It’s not too much?”

“Oh, it’s waaaay too much. But it’s beautiful. I can’t believe it.”

Loki pulled out her chair, blushing ever so slightly as she kissed his cheek before sitting down. Despite the grandeur of their surroundings, their conversation remained light and filled with raucous laughter. Loki told her about all the mischief he had gotten up to since she had inadvertently freed him from indentured servitude, Darcy told him about all the stupid things the tower residents had been up to in his absence, and they shared their thoughts on the latest episodes of their favourite shows – apparently Loki’s bunker got high speed internet, and with a little magical hacking he had unlimited access to every streaming service known to Midgard.

And once their meal was done, and the wine drunk, Loki suggested they move on to the next portion of their date.

“There’s more?” Darcy asked in disbelief as Loki pulled out her chair.

“Of course there’s more,” Loki replied, escorting her back to the hotel foyer. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Darcy smiled.

They took a few steps towards the hotel doors and Paris faded away. Darcy gasped as found herself on the edge of ballroom full of formally dressed couples. The lights reflected off the gold accents on every surface, [bathing the room in an ethereal glow](http://www.saint-petersburg.com/images/peterhof/grand-palace/ballroom-at-the-grand-palace-in-peterhof.jpg). Words failed Darcy and Loki couldn’t wipe the smile from his face as he led her to the middle of the floor. Loki spun the bewildered Darcy into his arms, the fur stole disappearing back into the ether from whence it came.

“Where the hell are we?” Loki said something that Darcy heard as ‘ _roh-see-ya_ ’ and it took a moment for her to grasp his meaning. “Russia? We’re in Russia?!” she hissed.

“Shhh, Darcy. The music’s about to start,” he smirked.

The second the violins began playing [an all too familiar tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y69UG3K4zyA) Darcy’s knees buckled and she almost burst into tears.

“Darcy, what’s wrong?” Loki asked, holding her up.

“It’s too much,” she whispered desperately, trying to calm down.

“It’s just dinner and dancing,” Loki argued. “Just a standard Midgardian date, is it not?”

“It’s too wonderful, and you know it. It’s… it’s amazing, thank you.”

“Don’t praise me too much,” he replied cheekily, mocking her. “I totally stole this idea from a Disney movie.”

Darcy stifled a laugh as Loki put one of her hands at his shoulder, placing his at her back.

“Loki… I have no idea how to waltz,” she told him nervously, staring at all the elegant couples dancing around them.

“Just follow my lead,” he winked.

Loki spun her around the dance floor and Darcy didn’t falter or look at her feet once, her eyes fixed on Loki’s smiling face. When the music stopped Loki stepped back and bowed, kissing Darcy’s hand, as she blushed furiously, before leading her out of the grand ballroom as the rest of the invited guests applauded and prepared for the next dance.

“Now, I believe that is our date concluded,” Loki declared once they were far enough away from the ballroom to hear themselves speak over the music. “And what was it you said would come after the date,” he mused, smiling with that smug, mischievous spark in his eyes.

“Shut up and kiss me, you idiot,” Darcy growled playfully, pulling the lapels of his fine black jacket until his lips met hers, kissing him hungrily.


	16. Chapter 16

When Darcy opened her eyes they were back in Loki’s bunker bedroom. Darcy pulled away and smiled, turning and silently requesting that Loki unzip her dress. She turned to face him as it fell to the floor, smiling wickedly as Loki’s eyes wandered over her lingerie – the lingerie he’d conjured for her; black lace with gold bows.

“Do you know what it does to me to know I can render a god speechless?” she asked huskily, slowly undressing him. When he was finally naked she kissed his lips, his neck, his chest, but when she started to move lower Loki stopped her, pulling her upright and attempting to push her back towards the bed.

“You don’t kneel for me, not you,” Loki murmured, kissing her.

“And what if I want to?” she countered, placing a hand on his chest and gently urging him back against the wall. “What if I want to get on my knees and worship you with my mouth? I need you to let me, Loki. Let me see you come undone because of me, let me take all your power, all your control… You won’t regret it,” she added with a small, reassuring smile.

Loki pulled her close, kissing her desperately, ruining her fancy up do in the process, before acquiescing to her simple demand, his breathing hitching as she took his length in her mouth. Within minutes he was cursing under his breath in every language he knew, and when Darcy’s tongue did something absolutely delicious he cried out as his hips bucked in Darcy’s firm grip. He dared to look down at her, her usually bright blue eyes dark with lust, her dark painted lips sliding up and down his length. She smiled, as best she could with his thick cock in her mouth.

“And you call me ‘Mischief’,” he growled.

Darcy sucked on the head of his cock as one of her hands gripped the base of his shaft, working him until he was rendered an incoherent mess, a string of disjointed swear words falling from his lips.

“Fuck, Darcy…”

Darcy got to her feet, beaming as she wiped her fingers across her lips.  
“I love hearing you say that.”

“Mmm… Fuck, Darcy…” he repeated, kissing her as herded her back towards the bed. Darcy hesitated at the last second and switched places with him, pushing Loki back onto the bed, biting her lip at the sight of his erection ( _thank God for alien stamina!_ ) as she removed her lingerie and then offered one foot to Loki, and then the other, smiling as he threw her shoes away. She pushed him onto his back and immediately his hands sought out the apex of her thighs. She pulled them away, tsking cheekily.

“I don’t wanna wait. I need to feel you,” she moaned as she sunk down on his length. She placed Loki’s hands on her hips, riding him slowly as he gripped her tightly and lavished attention on her breasts with his mouth. As her climax approached, and her movements became stuttered, Loki took charge, gripping the flesh of her ass as he pistoned his hips. She screamed his name and called upon all her false gods but he didn’t grant her mercy until he felt her clench around him twice more.

“Oh… Fuck, Darcy…” he muttered as she fell against his chest, giggling softly despite her exhaustion.

“I’m going to have to get that on a t-shirt.”

“Or you could just stay here and I’ll say it all the time,” he swore, kissing her forehead.

Darcy pulled away suddenly, cursing herself for doing so because she could already feel Loki putting his defences back up.

“Loki…”

“I was merely jesting, Darcy. I will, of course, return you to your chambers by morning.”

“I know you weren’t joking, Loki,” she replied quietly. “And I’m not going to lie, I may have imagined several scenarios in which you lock me up and have your way with me whenever you want, but in reality it’s not as sexy as it sounds.”

“You speak as though I would keep you a prisoner,” he added bitterly, avoiding her eyes.

“Not in the traditional sense, no, but where could I go?” she ask, gesturing at the grey landscape outside. “I’d be stuck here by myself waiting for you to come back from saving the world, and whatever else it is that you do with your newfound freedom. I don’t want it to be like that. I need a life outside your bedroom, Loki.”

“I can see the sense in your argument, I suppose,” he eventually admitted.

“Of course you do. I always make sense,” she said, curling up beside Loki as he snorted with laughter. “Shut up, I do. It’s not my fault you’re a weird alien with no understanding of our ways,” she joked. “Besides,” she added seriously, running her fingers through his hair as she kissed him. “Moving in together before we’ve even had an official third date is taking things a bit too fast, don’t you think? It’s a really sexy idea, Loki. But it’s just a little overwhelming for me at the moment, okay?”

“You don’t find the idea repellent?” Loki asked, heart on his sleeve.

“The complete opposite, I promise,” Darcy laughed as Loki moved over her, making love to her again until she was a quivering mess beneath him, begging for release.  

** *** **

Darcy had fallen asleep in Loki’s arms but when she woke up she was alone in her bed at Avengers Tower, for which she was silently thankful. Their intimacy level had been amped up all the way to eleven the night before, so saving an emotional goodbye for their next date was a good thing in Darcy’s book. She lay in bed for another half an hour before convincing herself to get up and start the day. She showered and dressed in leggings and her Culver hoodie before heading to the kitchen for some much needed sustenance. The second she stepped out of her room she could hear raised voices coming from the shared living space and, despite all the warning sirens in her head, she went to investigate, freezing when she found half the tower’s residents gathered around the dining table while Nick Fury paced and fumed, pointing violently at various hologram-y cell phone pics of her date with Loki and – oh goodie – security feed of their first kiss in the hallway. Director Fury turned suddenly, his one good eye fixed on the apprehensive lab assistant.

“Aw, crap,” Darcy sighed. “Hi Fury. Mind if I grab a coffee before we head to the interrogation room?”

“Get me a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin while you’re at it, Ms Lewis. I think I’m going to need it.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to those of you who had been setting your watch by these updates this week, but it’s Friday night and there were beers. Okieday, second-to-last chapter. Let’s go…

Two hours later and Darcy felt like she had bared her soul – and her sexual history - to the director. She left the interrogation room in search of more coffee, or possibly something stronger despite the hour, sick to her stomach about Fury’s proviso that as long as Loki kept his oath and continued to help the Avengers, he wouldn’t ask any more questions. But… should Loki go rogue, and she help him, Fury would have no qualms about bringing the full might of SHIELD down upon her head. 

When Darcy got back to the living area she felt a nauseating wave of déjà vu as half a dozen pair of eyes stared back at her. She caught the image of the now empty interrogation room before Tony dismissed it.

“Well, that’s just awesome,” she grumbled, ignoring the stares in favour of coffee. “What the hell, Friday? I thought we were buds.”

“I’m sorry, Ms Lewis. I cannot refuse a direct request from the boss.”

“Yeah, cos he failed to give you a conscience. Fancy that,” she muttered, walking back to her room. 

** *** **

The rest of the weekend was a painful blur of awkward silences and pointed stares. Clint couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her and would immediately walk away, shaking his head in disgust. Natasha dropped by just to ask her if she was okay and then proceeded to stare at her for ten minutes straight, seemingly absorbing all the information she needed from Darcy’s body language. Thor kept looking at her as though he wanted to say something, mostly because Jane kept nagging him to do so, but the astrophysicist herself didn’t say a word about it, ignoring the elephant in the room in favour of science-talk and pregnant pauses. But Tony was, by far, the worst.

“Please tell me he cries his way through sex.”

“Ugh, Tony. Enough already,” Darcy whined as she tried to retreat to the private sanctuary her bedroom had become.

“Or better yet, that he screams his horse’s name when he climaxes.”

Darcy stopped in her tracks and glared at Tony with a mix of disgust and rage.

“I can’t believe Pepper lets you touch her.”

“Hey, that’s a bit harsh.”

“No kidding,” she spat back, slamming the door in his face. 

** *** **

Darcy had been slumped on her bed for a good three hours, drowning her misery in emo rock, when Jane barged in, flustered and over caffeinated.

“Okay, I tried to keep quiet but since Thor won’t talk to you about it, I will. Loki!” she practically screeched. “Loki! Of all the men in the world, you had to sleep with Loki? Did you not think for a second that he might be manipulating you? Using you? And how the hell could you forget about all the awful things he’s done – he’s a murderer, Darcy. What the hell were you thinking? Were you even thinking? Was he mind controlling you? What the hell, Darcy?!”

Darcy stood up to face her attacker, her chest heaving from the pain of the metaphorical knife buried in it. She opened and closed her mouth several times, blinking back tears, before eventually finding her voice.

“Firstly… He is not using me, we are dating. And yes, I fully intend to keep seeing him, in spite of the megaton of bullshit everyone is heaping on me. Secondly, this whole building is full of murderers. Each and every one of them has got blood on their hands. And before you go on about how ‘it was only the bad guys,’ just remember that Tony was the goddamn ‘merchant of death,’ and Black Widow’s the boogyman government agents warn their kids about at night. And I’m sure they’re not the only ones with bloodstained pasts. Ask Thor about Jötunheim sometime and see if he can honestly say he feels proud about that day.” Darcy paused and gulped for breath before pointing a finger accusingly at her soon-to-be-former boss and friend. “And how fucking dare you, Jane! You of all people don’t get judge me. I was friends with Loki for months before we started sleeping together. You knew Thor for a weekend and then pined after him for two whole years. I remember because I was the one who had to practically carry you to bed when you fell asleep in your lab, the one who had to force you into the shower when you started to smell, the one who had to basically spoon feed you so you didn’t die from self-neglect while you were obsessing over your star maps and instrument readouts. I did all of that for you, and I didn’t ask for one thank you in return, and I never judged you, Jane. Not once.”

A heavy silence fell over the room, both of them fighting back tears. Jane shifted nervously and went to speak but Darcy put her hands over her ears.

“No. I don’t want to hear anymore. Get out.”

“Darcy…”

“Get out, Jane!”

Darcy slammed the door behind her and then lunged for her phone, sinking to the floor beside her bed, quietly sobbing as she called Loki. She hadn’t told him what had happened yet out of fear of his reaction, and out of fear that in her emotional state she might have just stood back and watched. 

It rang longer than Darcy was comfortable with before she felt a familiar energy surround her. She wiped her tears on her sleeve and when she looked up she was in Loki’s arms, seated on his couch in his mountain hideout, in front of a roaring fire. Loki didn’t say a word, just held her close and conjured whatever Darcy needed (tissues and a few shots of tequila), waiting patiently for her to speak.

“This weekend sucked,” she mumbled into his chest.

“What happened?” he asked quietly, his hand moving in slow circles over her back.

“Exactly what you said would happen. Everyone knows and they think I’m an idiot. Or worse.”

“I’m sorry, Darcy.” 

“I can’t stay there anymore.”

“You can stay with me,” he offered, his tone almost desperate with longing. “At least until you get something else sorted out.” 

“Okay, but I have to ask you something first,” she said, pushing away from him so she could look him in the eyes. “And I need you to answer honestly, no matter how much it will go against your nature to do so, okay?” Loki nodded. “Are you sleeping with them - your fans, the girls in the leather underwear? Because if you are, that’s cool, you could totally magic your way around the world like a porno Santa, and I wouldn’t blame you. But if you are I’m going to need my own room, because I’m selfish and I don’t want to share, but I do like you, and I think we could be friends, and I’d be happy just being your housemate, and…”

Loki crashed his lips against hers, stemming the tidal wave of nervous rambling. Darcy sighed into the kiss, moaning as his hand moved to the nape of her neck, twisting in her hair.

“Was that the reason for your hesitation? You honestly thought there were others? No,” he assured her. “One lustful and completely insane Midgardian girl is quite enough for me, thank you,” he smirked.

“Really?” Darcy giggled. “Because your tumblr posts suggest otherwise.”

“That is simply ego stroking, in the most literal sense, and nothing more, I promise you.”  

Darcy shook her head, smiling, and kissed him. Loki repositioned them so he was lying on top of her, and Darcy giggled, thrilled by the idea of them making out on a couch like a normal couple. Until Loki teleported them to the bedroom, but that was cool too.

** *** **

“I had been thinking about what you said,” Loki admitted, some hours and many orgasms later. “When you said you couldn’t just sit here all day waiting for me, and you’re quite right.”

“Of course I am,” Darcy replied, her lips ghosting over his.

“You are far too intelligent and vivacious to spend your time idling. In lieu of a grand purpose, I do have a suggestion.”

“Mm?”

“You need some form of employment to occupy your days, and I shall delight in occupying your nights,” he added darkly.

“And what sort of job could I get out here? You said the nearest Starbucks was several countries over. I doubt there are any golden arches nearby either. What am I supposed to do?”

“Well… ever since I split from Fury’s ‘super-secret boy band,’ as Stark once put it, I find myself in need of a PR manager slash Midgardian cultural expert slash political science major to help me navigate these strange new waters I’ve found myself in. What do you think?” 

Darcy laughed so hard she could barely hold it together long enough to say yes.

** *** **

Later in the week Darcy introduced herself to Loki’s online followers as his PR girl. She answered the non-explicit messages, saving some that she felt deserved personal replies from the account holder himself. She posted a few candid photos and organised a real-time twitter Q&A, and eventually she began fielding calls from major media outlets around the world but very rarely granted an interview. As much as an attention whore as Loki was, he was never going to be a slave to the ravenous appetites of the public; he was in control, not them. To her appetites, though, he seemed slavishly devoted.


	18. Chapter 18

Darcy fidgeted with her boyfriend’s green and silver tie while he smirked at her.

“Focus, Loki,” she scolded.

“Darcy, it’s an interview. I’ve done dozens of them.”

“Yes, in print. This one is on live television. If you say something I rather you didn’t they can’t edit it out.”

“It will be fine, Darcy. I’ll behave,” he smirked.

“Somehow I don’t believe you.”

“You’re a very wise woman.”

“We’re on in five,” advised the harried production assistant who had been buzzing around them for the past fifteen minutes.

_“Good evening everyone. On tonight’s show we have only one guest. That’s right, just one. But trust me when I tell you he’s worth a thousand. Please welcome to the show, for his very first television appearance – LOKI!”_

As the interview continued Darcy could not stop fidgeting. She tugged at her black dress or toyed with her necklace, all the while clutching her tablet, ready to go into crisis mode at a moment’s notice.

“I wish Tony was as well behaved as that on live television,” said a quiet voice beside her.

“Pepper! What are you doing here?”

“I had business in the building, and when I heard you’d be here I wanted to say hi.”

“Hi,” Darcy replied awkwardly, turning her attention back to the interview. 

_“So… New York, 2012. Invasion Day. The day we found out that aliens existed. The day you brought them here. What can you tell us about that?”  
_

_“Well, what can I say that hasn’t already been said? I led an army. I aided in the destruction of one of the greatest cities of your realm. I was not of my own mind at the time, but the influences over me do not change the outcome. Your world was changed, and so many of your citizens lost their lives that day. I can never truly make amends for my actions, and I know I shall never be truly forgiven for them, but I shall spend the next thousand years of my life working with the Avengers, SHIELD, and any future incarnations of such noble intentioned organisations, doing everything within my power to make your world a better, safer place. And I can only hope that such a vow proves the depth of my remorse and my willingness to seek atonement for my sins.”  
_

“That was a masterpiece,” Pepper commended. “Your work?”

“I may have had him practising his sincere face in the mirror this morning.”

“Loki’s always praising your work, but seeing it firsthand… Would you consider taking on Tony as a client?”

“Making a model citizen of the God of Lies is one thing – but Tony Stark?” she laughed. “Wait, when did you speak to Loki?”

“Hmm?”

“You said he was praising my work?”

“Oh, I heard it from Tony. What do you think they talk about when they’re on missions together?” she teased. “It’s all Darcy this, and Darcy that. The guys really miss you,” she added seriously. “And for what it’s worth, they’re sorry for how everything ended.”

Darcy shifted awkwardly in her green heels, turning her attention back to Loki to avoid talking about the fact that she hadn’t made contact with anyone at Avengers Tower in over three months, with the exception of Jane, who had broken Darcy’s resolve with a week’s worth of tearful voicemails.

_“So, ‘Loki’s Army’…”  
_

“Ugh…” Darcy groaned, opening a page of pre-prepared apologies in the likely event Loki said something completely perverted. She had tried to get him to stop responding to the millions of dirty messages he received but he had refused, though he had stopped making lewd comments in return, merely thanking them for their devotion. It was his guilty pleasure, he’d argued, at which point Darcy had rolled her eyes and walked away. Darcy was certain the goth god of tumblr felt guilty about no more than five things: pandering to his fans was definitely not one of them.

_“So you get hundreds-“  
_

_“Millions,” Loki corrected.  
_

_“Millions? Millions of messages from these girls…“  
_

_“Men and women of all ages.”  
_

_“…professing their loyalty to you, begging you to allow them to kneel before you. And you respond to that, you encourage that?”  
_

_“I am considered something of a god in your mythologies, and it is in the nature of gods to thrive on worship. I am afraid I am no different. It is a weakness of mine, but I permit myself so few.”  
_

_“I gotta tell you, with all that attention, all those women throwing themselves at you, how do you not have, like, a whole harem of women waiting on you? Do you have a harem? Please tell me you have a harem.”  
_

_“No, no harem. I’m actually in a committed, monogamous relationship.”  
_

_“She’s gotta be one hell of a woman to keep your attention away from all those fangirls.”  
_

_“She is utterly singular, yes. As gratifying as worship is, I’m afraid it is nothing compared to the love of a good woman.”  
_

Darcy covered her blushing face with her tablet as Pepper laughed quietly beside her, glancing up just in time to see Loki wink at her.

“I take it back – Tony might be easier.”

“Speaking of, I wouldn’t be forgiven if I didn’t at least ask you to maybe think about calling him. Or dropping by the tower one day. They really miss you.”

“Is Thursday night still pizza night?” Darcy asked as nonchalantly as she could whilst chewing nervously on a thumbnail.

“Always.”

Darcy and Pepper applauded with everyone else when the interview wrapped and Loki took a few moments to thank the interviewer, as Darcy had drilled into him that he had to, before excusing himself and returning to her side, by which time Pepper had already taken her leave.

“Well, pet, how did I do?”

“Even better than I hoped, and I have some pretty high expectations.”

Loki smiled and gave her a quick kiss before putting an arm around her shoulders and leading her out of the studio.

“Was that Ms Potts beside you earlier?”

“Mhmm,” Darcy hummed, her thumbnail back between her teeth.

“I hope she had nothing but good things to say.”

“Yeah, she was fine. Totally nice.”

“Then what’s got you contemplating the meaning of the universe, hmm?” he joked, rubbing a fingertip across her furrowed brow.

“I was just thinking about dinner.”

“And what were you hungry for?”

“Pizza.”

** *** **

“Darcy!”

Jane seemed to forget there was a table between her and the two people who had magically appeared in the middle of the room, and almost careened over it to pull Darcy into a hug.

“I missed you so much!”

“I missed you too!”

“Wow,” Jane remarked, pushing her away suddenly to take in her wardrobe choices. “You look amazing, Darcy.”

“You like? It’s my professional getup.”

“Very grown up. And green shoes, of course!” Jane was smiling so hard Darcy feared her face might break under the strain, but she couldn’t help but mimic her joy in the presence of all her old friends.

“Brother, you look well,” Thor said, offering Loki his hand. Loki hesitated but briefly before taking it.

“You as well, Thor. How’s your shoulder?”

“Ah, it’s fine,” 

“It was broken,” Jane corrected testily, relinquishing her hold on Darcy.

“It healed within the week, Jane,” Thor replied dismissively. “It was a mild injury at best.”

“Well, I don’t even want to think about what you consider a serious injury,” Jane muttered as Tony pushed his way forward. 

“Hey kiddo,” Tony smiled, tentatively going in for a hug. “Would you forgive me if I said I was sorry?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m sorry. Asshole’s kind of my default setting.”

“I’m aware,” Darcy chuckled, hugging him back.

Loki helped himself to a box of pepperoni pizza, taking a seat at one end of the table whilst the rest of the assembled residents greeted Darcy. He was finishing his second slice when she finally sat down beside him.

“Gimme one of those,” she said hungrily, tearing out a slice. “Mmm…”

“So, lovebirds,” Tony said, reaching for a slice of tomato/basil/mozzarella. “You just in town for the interview, or are you staying for a few days, or, wait… Do you guys live in New York? I can’t find you anywhere, but if you’re living right under our noses I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Yes, Stark, we’ve been residing in your basement all this time.”

“Ha ha.”

“Actually, Loki’s place is really amazing – it’s in the middle of nowhere, somewhere. Whatevs, it’s really beautiful. It looks like Narnia is right outside my window.”

“Wait, you don’t even know where it is?”

Darcy, her mouth full of pizza, shook her head.

“He’s not keeping your prisoner, is he?”

“Tony, do I look like a prisoner? C’mon, I just came back, don’t start this shit again.”

“Sorry, asshole mode. But seriously, how do you not know where you live?”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like there’s road signs, or roads for that matter. Teleporting’s the only way in or out.”

“So do forgive us for not inviting you over for a beverage, Stark.”

They – Loki and Tony, mostly – argued over the necessity for such an obscure location and the restrictions it put on Darcy’s freedom. In the end though Tony grudgingly accepted that Darcy’s safety was paramount, and the less people (people who would want to do Loki harm) who knew where to find her, the better.

“What on earth was all that noise about?” Pepper asked, stepping out of the elevator.

“Hey hun, we were just complaining that Loki won’t invite us over for a housewarming.”

“I’m sure he has his reasons.”

“Here, I saved some of your favourite gluten-free, lettuce pizza. And by saved I mean no one else wanted to touch it.”

“How sweet, thank you,” she replied dryly. “Darcy, Loki, I’m glad you decided to join us.”

“Well, you said there was pizza, so,” Darcy shrugged.

“You did this?” Tony asked, jabbing a thumb towards the other end of the table.

“I stopped by the studio where Loki was doing his interview to say hi.”

“It was a great interview, by the way,” Jane added.

“Yeah, you almost sounded sincere,” Clint teased.

“It was okay, I’ve seen better,” Tony snarked.

“Tony, behave. Darcy’s never going to take you on as a client if you continue being an ass to her boyfriend.”

“I told you I couldn’t do it, Tony’s impossible.”

“I’m impossible?” Tony faltered, torn between not wanting to admit he needed media handling and not wanting to appear less amenable than Loki. “You turned Lucifer’s hornier cousin into a trained poodle, but you don’t think you can get me to hold my tongue in front of a camera?”

“You wouldn’t like my training methods, Tony,” Darcy smirked.

“I don’t know, I – ow!”

Pepper removed her elbow from Tony’s ribs and reached for another slice of pizza.

“I suggest you hold your tongue now, Stark. It wouldn’t be…”

“ZAP!” Darcy shouted next to Loki’s ear, causing him to flinch violently. The whole table erupted in laughter, even Loki, though he tried to hide it by holding his face in his hands.

“Like I said, you wouldn’t like my training methods,” Darcy giggled.

“That wasn’t funny,” Loki said eventually, trying to appear serious. He spared Darcy a private smile, reaching out beneath the table for her crossed legs, slipping his hand between her thighs as he adjusted himself.

“No, it was hilarious,” Tony replied, wiping a tear away after he’d caught his breath. “You know, kiddo. Stark Tech’s got a new line of non-lethal weapons in production. You want first look?”

“I think a new taser would be a wonderful idea. Don’t you, babe?” she said, grinning cheekily.

“Whatever makes you happy, dearest.”

** *** **

Back in their secret mountain bunker, the pair lay together, still awake despite the late hour. Loki was quietly pensive, toying absently with a lock of Darcy’s hair, as she drowsily placed kisses along his neck.

“Darcy, do you want to get married?”

Darcy froze mid hickey and sat up, cringing at his question.

“Please tell me you are asking in general and that was not a proposal.”

Loki shifted, putting his weight on an elbow as he watched Darcy’s expressions intently.

“Stark has asked me repeatedly as to when I am going to make an ‘honest woman’ of you. I’m led to believe that that means people expect us to get married.”

Darcy cringed again and tried to cover herself with a sheet in attempt to make herself feel less vulnerable. She ran a hand through her tangled hair and tried to get her thoughts in order.

“Do you remember when I was explaining dating? How it might end in moving in together, or marriage, or not marriage, and that sometimes that dating just… ends?”

“You wish to leave me?”

“What? No! Not now, but…” Darcy shifted uncomfortably, clutching the sheet to her chest. She hadn’t been planning on having this conversation for a few years at least. “You’re going to live forever – it might as well be forever,” she said over him when he tried to correct her. “And I’m not. I’m going to live for another fifty years, give or take, but my youth? That’s completely gone in, what, 10 years? Can you honestly say that you’ll still find me hot as a sassy fifty year old? As a grey and wrinkly, even sassier seventy year old? Are you going to hold my hand when I’m bedridden and dying?”

She gasped for breath as emotions she had been ignoring since she had officially thought of herself as Loki’s girlfriend bubbled to the surface. Loki sat up and pulled her close, wiping away her tears. Darcy kissed him and cupped his cheek, pushing his hair behind his ears. 

“Darcy,” Loki whispered soothingly, tilting her chin up so she would look at him properly. “Darcy Lewis, I love you. And if you decide that you want to be with me for the whole of my lifetime I will return to Asgard and steal away a golden apple, which will extend your life, and your youth. I’d even resort to asking Odin nicely if it meant we weren’t parted in a mere number of decades.”

Darcy was wracked with sobs then, clutching Loki’s shoulders.

“But that’s huge! That’s so huge! That’s five thousand years, I-I-I can’t even imagine it. That’s like the whole of human freaking civilisation! And what if we break up? Ten years from now, a hundred years from now? Then what? I’m immortal and all alone. What the hell would I do without you, Loki?”

Loki held her close, swaying gently, as he waited for her to calm down.

“I understand that it’s a big decision, Darcy, but know this: humans may be fickle, but Asgardians are not. I would swear an oath of loyalty to you for the rest of your life, however long that may be.”

“Really?”

“Really? And you needn’t give me a decision about the apple this day, or the next. As you say, we have about ten years before that delicious ass of yours loses its appeal.”

“Oh my god!” Darcy shrieked, tackling the hysterical Loki to the mattress. “You did not just say that!” 

She began hitting him but Loki easily overpowered her and pinned her thrashing body beneath his, one hand holding her wrists above her head, the other squeezing her aforementioned ass.

“You are beautiful, Darcy,” he added soberly. “And the years shall not diminish that.”

“I’m completely in love with you,” she admitted quietly.

“I would be remiss in my charms if you were not,” he replied, smiling devilishly. 

“Shut up and kiss me, you idiot.”

** *** **

A few years later, on the eve of Darcy’s thirtieth birthday, Loki got down on one knee and offered her a golden apple. Darcy said yes.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. xoxox


End file.
